


Ordinary; or, How to Train Your Super-powered Cat

by wyrm_n_sigun



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Language, Profanity, Violence, animal cruelty, casual ableist language, cat!Toothless, httyd 2 spoilers, some disturbing imagery, superhero au, unintentional animal cruelty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrm_n_sigun/pseuds/wyrm_n_sigun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes a super's powers didn't manifest in childhood, Hiccup's father said with increasing rarity. Sometimes they wouldn't appear until adolescence. Maybe even later. One could never know. Hiccup knew, though. His mother had been Normal. He was the same way, and wouldn't change. </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>That lingering hope in his father's voice, though, could drive Hiccup to do some very stupid things. </i></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(AU: Superheroes !! Kind of. Eheh.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was when he found that stupid cat that things really started going downhill.

 

Well, no. Technically, things had been going downhill for a long time. Actually, if one were  _strictly_  accurate, the slope began the day Hiccup was born. But the sort of...general downhill slant started even before that, with his father and the story about head-butting a rock and discovering he had superpowers that he'd told a million times. Back then it was kind of a plateau at an acute angle, and when Hiccup was born the descent was steeper and the cliff a lot craggier, but when it came to the cat -- right there was the 90 degree drop. Certain death and rocks at the bottom. Never had anyone else failed so hard; at least it would take him out in a blaze of glory. 

 

It wasn't really the stupid cat's fault, though. He was just a normal cat. Hiccup was just a normal kid, too, and that was the whole problem. In their small town of barely over 700, almost no one was normal, and that was just fine with everyone. They joked that there was something in the water, and given the fact 600 of the town's people had superhuman powers, the jokes might just have been true. But the supers of Berk were no joke themselves. Except, of course, for Hiccup, who was at fifteen still weed-weak, constantly overpowered by his father's shadow, and entirely lacking in any superhuman abilities.

 

His father's name was Stoick, because that was fitting, but outside of the town and in super-powered circles he was known as Skullcrusher (because that was an even better descriptor). Hiccup could crush an ant, if he concentrated. 

 

There were many others, too. Gobber (alias Grump), who worked both the auto shop as Hiccup's part-time boss and the super secret super-lab that was no secret at all. There were the other five Hiccup's age, all being groomed by super-powered parents to fill their super-powered shoes, whether they were ready or not. There was his half-uncle Spitelout, Phlegma, all his dad's friends... he could go on. But the point was that Hiccup was in with the wrong crowd, and it was a crowd known for lifting buildings, surviving death rays, and punching opponents through the earth's crust. Among other such talents. 

 

Sometimes a super's powers didn't manifest in childhood, Hiccup's father said with increasing rarity. Sometimes they wouldn't appear until adolescence. Maybe even later. One could never know. Hiccup knew, though. His mother had been Normal. He was the same way, and wouldn't change. 

 

That lingering hope in his father's voice, though, could drive Hiccup to do some very stupid things. 

 

The first Stupid Thing he did was the Infamous Hiccup Catapult. Exactly what it sounds like. He was eight. No one has very good ideas at eight years old. 

 

The second Stupid Thing he did was The Boots. Stuck to all surfaces. Every surface. All the surfaces possibly imaginable. Hiccup still had a patch of discoloured skin right by his armpit that was one of them.

 

The third Stupid Thing no one mentioned aloud. But they remembered. Hiccup was forever forbidden from being anywhere near chickens or PVC tubing.

 

The fourth Stupid Thing was The Super Gloves. Fashion disaster, and too large for his hands. He didn't throw them out, though. He hoped one day his hands would fit them snug.

 

The fifth Stupid Thing was something no one knew about, and he hoped no one would, because it was happening right now. He took another furtive glance out the super-lab's window.  Not long left.

 

He watched his invention come to a boil, and he turned off the burner and removed it. His baby, his one-way ticket to everything he wanted --- it was ready for him, shining sweetly sunshine in the beaker. The future grinned bright imaginings. 

 

The stuff he'd read made it sound like such a concoction could be dangerous or lethal. But every over-the-counter pill said such too, he'd paid no worry. So far. He wondered how one went about consuming something like this. 

 

As luck would have it though, the building rocked, and he heard shouting and heaving outside and general commotion. He suspected some super-powered villainy was afoot, as it always turned out to be. Maybe it was Deadly Nadder, she was a piece of work. Turned herself into a human sparkler, outfitted with missiles that shot fireworks. Or it could be the Hideous Zippleback, it was quite a sight. A snake got exposed to something nuke-nasty, sprouted a new head and grew to the size of a train. He heard his father's voice issuing a challenge amidst the chaos. That must mean it was Monstrous the Nightmare attacking tonight; he and Stoick had a beef going way back. Monstrous altered his DNA so that he was impervious to fire, and then he would douse himself in gasoline and light up. Hiccup had always thought him a bit of a show-off. 

 

The building shook again. Stoick had followed Monstrous onto the roof, and the ceiling lights bobbed as Stoick's punches landed. Hiccup clutched his golden formula to his chest. All he had to do was drink it... 

 

Someone outside shouted, Stoick roared in dismay, and Hiccup gasped as he heard things begin to crack and smelt smoke begin to curl and felt heat begin to spread. Then the ceiling started to fall in.

 

Monstrous had lit the building aflame. 

 

Hiccup ran to the door, but ceiling tile and plaster collapsed in front of it before he could reach. He cast about. Voices outside asked if anyone was in the building, someone was ringing the fire department, Gobber was yelling. Stoick broke Monstrous's nose and the villain fled; Hiccup grabbed a chair and made a reach for the back window. He was still holding the yellow beaker. When more voices asked after occupants, he didn't answer: he couldn't let them see him and what he was holding. He got himself on the sill, and just as he was wondering how he would survive a 20-foot drop to concrete and looked at the beaker again in those last three seconds one takes before making an insane decision, the flaming roof finally gave up. A mess of burning beams and bricks rained into the room and smashed many machines and chemicals, and the floor blew up completely. He held on for his life. His scream was involuntary. 

 

His father heard him. "Hiccup?! Oh, goddamn it--"

 

Smashing the remaining ceilings and walls in his wake, Stoick went into the burning lab after his son, calling his name. Hiccup may have been a coward, a weakling, and an embarrassment, but he did have  _some_  sense of self-preservation. He was also an idiot. It was a combination of these things that led him to do the sixth Stupid Thing he'd done in his life. But, really, it was so dumb that it counted for five more. 

 

He emptied the illicit chemical mixture that was supposed to give him superpowers into the drainage well below. 

 

When his father seized him and shot out of the expiring building like a hairy cannonball, it appeared to all that Hiccup had just been hanging out there, innocent, or at least as much as Hiccup could be. He got yelled at anyway. His excuse was as poor as he was useless, and he heard laughter. 

 

He glanced into the drain as he was dragged home. Little puddles of yellow still swirled there.

 

 

 

 

 

He went to clean it up after school the next day. 

 

This is where the cat came in. 

 

Wheezing and crying, the cat lay on its side only a foot or two from the well. Flecks of yellow liquid hung still in its facial fur. 

 

Hiccup dropped his knapsack. His head filled with static.

 

He saw ribs with the cat's every pained breath. It wriggled upon seeing him, but gave up the attempt. Yellow and blue mucus leaked from the poor animal's mouth and nose, and its teeth and claws law scattered about on the ground, bloodless but very much divorced from its body. Its fur was sad and thin, and he guessed it lived in the alleys. What an unfortunate day to lap up a drink from this particular well, Hiccup thought. He grimaced. 

 

It was half three in the afternoon. On the other side of the ruined building, workmen tutted at the wreck and Gobber argued with the clean-up crew. Hiccup had to get out of here. 

 

The cat, though. He looked at its eyes: unfocused, but angry, he thought. It was too tired to howl, but it could still whimper. A wave of guilt hit, and Hiccup bit his lip. There was a Swiss Army knife in his sock.

 

He fished it out. The cat didn't, couldn't move. He opened the standard blade. He was fifteen; he wasn't going to cry. He dissected stuff in biology class all the time. Animals got put down all the time.

 

The thought of the mutated Hideous Zippleback, and the centipede landfill monster his half-uncle told stories about. This had been an accident, but his dad would commend his actions now; Hiccup could still do something right. He brought the knife a little closer. 

 

The poor cat was looking at him. He stared back, and at its empty gums and paw pads. It was selfish, but he was glad he hadn't consumed the draught after all.

 

That was an awful thought, and he was furious at himself on the cat's behalf. His hand was shaking. Fear, and empathy clotted together in his brain, with something like remorse.

 

He raised his knife. 

 

He looked at the cat. 

 

The cat looked back. 

 

He really was crying when he lowered the blade, realising that he didn't have the strength to do it. He'd already done enough to the dumb thing. 

 

Two wrongs didn’t make a right, he knew. He put the knife away.

 

This was the seventh Stupid Thing he did in his life. 

 

Hiccup reached in uncertainty for it, hoping maybe to find a nice animal shelter and absolution. The cat narrowed its eyes, watching his hands as they wandered. Then, apparently, the cat had enough. It yowled at him with its remaining strength, and he jumped back as the most incredible thing he'd ever seen happened. The cat seemed pretty amazed, too. The brick behind Hiccup's head was baked to blackness, and his heart thundered as he realized he really had just seen a cat shoot lasers from its eyes. 

 

The cat was standing now, shaking and bristling, and he watched it stumble down the alley and fight through a chain fence. Hiccup clutched each skittish breath, feeling faint. The cat vanished into shadow, but its clawless limp hung in the air. 

 

That seventh Stupid Thing was also the best decision Hiccup ever made, as it turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't apparent at first, though. In the days following his cat encounter, Hiccup was signed up for a self-defence class, and Stoick left town in the pursuit of Monstrous the Nightmare. Saturday afternoon, nursing a muscle pulled whilst defending himself with a styrofoam pool noodle, Hiccup wandered back to find the cat. He wasn't sure why; maybe guilt still bit at him. It was April, but the alley was shivering.

 

The teeth and claws still lay scattered about. The yellow elixir had all washed away. He found the cat just on the other side of the fence, curled under half a box. It was gumming sadly at a tiny bone, a mouse long since eaten, and it looked up at his approach. The cat's haphazard posture showed him it was a male. 

 

Hiccup set down his Tupperware and presented its contents: a baby food paste he'd made by dumping a tin of chunky tuna into the blender. He poured water from his thermos into another Tupperware, and offered that too. He waited, glad for the first time ever that he wasn't exactly a forbidding presence. 

 

The cat wanted none of him, and scowled; but apparently the food was too enticing, and received many furtive glances. Hiccup nudged the Tupperware closer. When the cat finally pounced on it, there was a definite scent of burning plastic; Hiccup groaned to see two paw-sized melted sags on the container's rim. It upended as the toothless cat put his entire eager front into it, and his paws burned through the bottom. He licked flecks of left tuna from his fur. Hiccup tried to smile kindly, though his braces rather spoilt the effect. 

 

Hiccup's accidental cat was pleased enough with his meal that he allowed Hiccup to carry his half-of-a-box away with him. But not without expressing his disapproval at the portion size he'd been served. 

 

Hiccup sighed, voice deadpan. "I'm sorry, sir, would you like to see the manager?" 

 

The toothless cat would have liked to, yes, but Hiccup had other plans. 

 

But when he went to replace the burned Tupperware, he got a few extra, one size up. And some heavy duty tin foil to line them with. 

 

 

 

 

 

It was four weeks before the super-lab was up and running again, relocated now to a warehouse indefinitely. Every day, after school or his self-defence class, or Fridays after helping at the auto shop, Hiccup snuck in through its basement door to snitch some thing or other, usually flameproof metal scraps or super-steel hinges. Stashing them in the alley behind the old lab building was maybe a stupid move, but he hoped no one would look. After he'd done that, he'd walk up to the town dump, turn left just at its gate, and creep down to the stream and the little rotten bridge that sat fat across. A pile of rocks and old wood sagged there against it. There he'd get out his squashed secret second lunchbox and Toothless would get his dinner. Today, it was actual cat food. Hiccup, tired of blaming every burn on shop class, put on his Super Gloves, and waited. 

 

Maybe actual cat food was more exciting than he'd anticipated, because today Toothless had a surprise for him. While he sat pretzel outside the makeshift cat house, Toothless watched Hiccup's back, and crept up. He'd learned not to pounce, because his paws were now capable of making the little human rub raw and scream pained, but he was always in the mood for fun. He howled loud instead. 

 

Hiccup still screamed. 

 

He fumbled to turn, and near screamed again when there was nothing there. Toothless made a sound like a human laugh, and showed himself. All it took was a thought. 

 

Hiccup hadn't expected to see an invisible cat that day, but that was what he got. Toothless approached to purr on him and mewl for food. Hiccup wondered if Toothless had gotten bigger, too. 

 

Hiccup thought. In his head, a run-down:

 

Toothless the cat was toothless and clawless after drinking some of the superpower chemical Hiccup made. But he also developed laser-beam eyes, which was freaky, and his paw pads were scorching to the touch, which was unpleasant. And now it seemed he could turn invisible too, which was brilliant, but he was also growing again, despite being an adult cat, which was annoying. Hiccup also had a suspicion that Toothless had gotten smarter. He knew Toothless suspected it too. 

 

He wondered what else he was in for. 

 

After the cat food was eaten and Toothless cleaned himself, Hiccup took out his measure tape again. Toothless couldn't imagine what the little human always wanted to wrap the thing around Toothless's paws for, but he suffered it with grace. (Though if you asked Hiccup he'd call it "attitude".) Hiccup scribbled numbers on his inner arm, already hearing his father tell him it was bad for his skin, and rewarded the furry drama king with scratches. 

 

Hiccup sighed. He thought of the fox he'd had to chase away from Toothless three days previous. Any day now something far away would blow up, and his dad and the team would leave town again. Then, maybe, he could have his chance. Toothless licked Hiccup's hand, because he seemed sad. 

 

He wasn't rightly sad, but he was afraid. He admitted it without shame, without imagining his father's face, because for once he was doing something that wasn't supposed to make him stronger. 

 

 

 

 

 

He was late, again. He found that it was happening more often. He really had to find a better time to buy Toothless his dinner than the half hour between school and self-defence class; at least no one asked why he came carrying ten cans of cat food this week. 

 

Astrid, however, did narrow her eyes at him. If Hiccup kept a diary, he'd have written _Astrid looked at me today_  in ecstasy. 

 

But had he written as much, she'd have ripped his arm off. She could have done it, easily. She looked away from him, drawing blank on his name. 

 

Between this class, training with Gobber, daily workouts, school, and being a part-time superhero, Astrid kept busy. When she finally became a full-time super, she would have to rearrange her schedule; but, for now, it was just right. The self-defence class would probably be first to go; it was just to fill time, honestly. She already knew the material, and besides -- she didn't need to defend herself. Others had to defend themselves from  _her._

 

The instructor reminded her again to be gentle, as her sparring partner was a weakling. She sighed. When they took a break, she punched a wall-mat, just to let off steam. Sitting ten feet distant, Hiccup was knocked on his side from the force of her blow. He scrambled his cat food cans back into his knapsack. 

 

"You're Skullcrusher's kid, right?" Astrid didn't turn, and Hiccup looked around for whoever she was talking to. Cheek-red, he remembered that he was an only child. 

 

"Er, yeah. That's me. Hicc -- um, Hiccup Haddock."

 

"Huh. Weird. I wouldn't have thought your dad a cat person."

 

Hiccup looked from Toothless' tumbled dinner to Astrid's back, and wished for death. He hoped the noise he made was thoroughly uninteresting. He added a note to his giddy diary entry:  _Astrid looked at me today, EVERYTHING RUINED_. 

 

She turned. She was checking her phone. "What's that noise for?"

 

Where was death already? He courted it so avidly with his super-lab disasters; how could it desert him at a time like this?

 

"Er, nothing! But, um, yeah. You're right. He's not a cat person. But, you know, he puts up with it. Um. Because of me. "  

 

"I see." 

 

Conversation over, it seemed. His legs still shook when break ended. Astrid didn't look his way again that day. 

 

But he felt his soul shrivel when she passed him on the way out and called him a shit liar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick had always encouraged his son's interest in mechanics and engineering. It was a manly discipline, he thought. Hiccup liked to draw, too, and that wasn't as masculine but it was productive, at least, and would help with the engineering. The reading was good, too; a smart child is the best kind of child. Even the sewing was useful, because buttons and seams could get quite a workout in the field. It was never the things his son was interested in that were the problem; it was the way he never could stay out of trouble while pursuing them. 

 

Take, for example, when Stoick returned from chasing Grunt the Hobbler. Hiccup had been doing self-defence classes for weeks now, but avoiding danger was not apparently on the course's agenda. A surprise attack by The Great Uncle on Berk, capitalizing on its chief hero's absence, found Hiccup in the super-lab again, doing something insane with a soldering iron. When the town's electricity went berserk, it was only by a miracle he survived the explosion. He said it was the Super Gloves that saved him. Stoick knew it was a lie. Dumb luck. 

 

Hiccup was always trying to make some baffling thing or another, and it caused most of Stoick's grey hairs. He was tired of being afraid for his son, wished he would just stay put like any other Normal person; Gobber suggested counselling for the kid's inferiority complex, but Stoick wouldn't humiliate his boy so. Besides, Hiccup would probably lie to the counsellor. He was incorrigible in his dishonesty. 

 

Stoick was right about that part: in fact, Hiccup really had lied about the Gloves. But while Stoick thought he'd lied to keep on pretending the ludicrous things worked, he lied because it was Toothless who saved him. It was another thing to add to the list of peculiarities the cat had developed: the ability to generate a protective force field in times of danger or stress. When Hiccup went to retrieve Toothless from the skip he'd hid in, Toothless greeted him with a playful swipe with the one paw glove they'd gotten out of Hiccup's endeavour. 

 

The paw glove had two parts. Covering the pads was a rubbery plastic that absorbed the heat from his paws. A set of buckles kept the plastic on the foot, and it had ridges on the bottom for gripping with. The second part was a set of long metal claws that screwed into a plate on his toes; the plate conducted his paw fire through them. It was only the right front foot for now, but seeing how ready Toothless was to use it, Hiccup knew he'd be coming back to make three more. 

 

It took him four and a half more weeks, but he did. He also made a little set of cat dentures for his friend. Toothless found them uncomfortable, so they were still in beta. But he appreciated the little human's gesture. 

 

Hiccup wondered what would happen once he'd finished making his accidental super-powered cat all better. 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of things happened, as it turned out.

 

Hiccup might have thought Astrid didn't notice him, but she did. At first she looked because he was Skullcrusher's kid and she thought him pathetic and amusing, but with time she began to look harder. She noticed the cat-claw burns on his upper arms when he took off his jumper, and she noticed the fur and grass clinging to his knees. She noticed how he started to wear long-sleeves under his T-shirts, because he'd finally seen her looking. 

 

She saw him once accompany his father to an emergency meeting at headquarters, and she noticed his guilty demeanour when surrounded by supers. She noticed how every time something happened at the lab, he was there. She crept up on him at the library once, and she noticed the kinds of things he drew in his notebook-margins.

 

And even more than she noticed, she remembered. She might not have known his name at first, but she knew he was the idiot who had bent over backwards making super-powered nonsense in the years previously. 

 

She was as smart as strong, which meant a lot. So when she followed him to the landfill and the stream and the bridge with the pile of rocks to put a stop to all this, she had a good idea of what to expect at the end of it. 

 

She didn't expect the cat to be so  _protective._

 

 

 

 

There was a moment. Hiccup never told anyone about it, but Toothless knew. Toothless always knew.

 

Astrid was scrambling and Toothless turned, triumphant. But upon seeing Hiccup's expression, his ears drooped. He stopped wriggling in the boy's limp arms.

 

Toothless knew about the wallet in his pocket, the square holding the like-leaves that humans felt important. Toothless had seen Hiccup stop, once -- if only for a moment -- upon seeing a bus, one of those big flatulent trundlers. The woods opposite the bridge were thought impenetrable.

 

There was a reason he'd put a far-away-folding map in his knapsack, and extra hoards of those leafy valuables.

 

He knew what was in the little human's sighs and mumblings. He did not like to hear his fear, or his hand-muffled talks of despair and fathers. Toothless would not lower himself to feeling guilt, one of those new unfamiliarities given by the yellow water, but he was aware. 

 

He also knew why they were still here. 

 

So when he saw that look in the human's face, his human's face, he sat still. Let Hiccup make the right choice.

 

They remained.

 

 

 

 

"I'm curious: are you  _actually_  crazy or, like, just  _stupid_ crazy?"

 

"You know, I didn't...  _ask_ for you to follow me." 

 

She glared, but sat still. Hiccup focused on daubing her arm with antiseptic, looking intent as if performing surgery.

 

"Toothless is sorry, by the way."

 

The cat didn't look very sorry, but Astrid decided she wasn't speaking to Hiccup. 

 

"Anyway, it's good I made those claw-covers, or this would have been, er, a lot worse, even with your healing factor." 

 

She changed her mind about speaking. "Ah yes, you're a genius. Your freak-of-nature cat has  _safety scissors_  attached to him. Wonderful." 

 

"Hey, now, that's not nice. He's not a freak."

 

"He is a freak of nature."   

 

"He's just -- would you hold still? He's just a cat I found. Come on, everyone likes cats." 

 

"Not your dad. Or was that a lie too?"

 

"No... no, Dad's not a cat person. He's not really... an animal person at all. But, er. Anyway, you're hurting Toothless's feelings, calling him names and stuff." 

 

"Okay, now  _that_ is a lie. Look at him, the smug little bastard. His ego is steel."

 

Hiccup sighed, and looked. Toothless was cleaning his nethers, without a care in the world. Astrid scowled.

 

"He's so full of himself."

 

Hiccup finally broke. "Right, you know what, just -- just shut up." She blinked at him, but his flared temper had already burnt to embers. "I... ugh. I'm sorry."

 

She frowned at him, lip bitten. He turned his head away, scrunching uneasy hands in his jeans. She sighed.

 

"Alright. Whatever." Her arm stung still. "Are you done yet?" 

 

He unwound, sighing a sharp air-stream. "...Yeah." He dug into his knapsack. "Um, I don't... I'm not sure I have big plasters. I've got little ones, so you'll have to wear a whole bunch."

 

"Do you really carry antiseptic  _and_ plasters around in your knapsack all the time?"

 

"'Course. I'm Hiccup Haddock, remember? Walking disaster. Er, do you want... I've got plain ones and, um... oh god...  _Lilo and Stitch._ Plasters." His blush was spectacular. 

 

"Plain, please," she said, perfectly casual.

 

He complied. Then, he sat back. Scratched his ear, wrung his hands, and she waited. 

 

"Er, look... Astrid, you... if you tell..."

 

"Yeah, what? What's gonna happen if I tell?" 

 

He grimaced. "I... well... I mean it ruins  _my_ life, but I know you don't really care a--"

 

She hated what he insinuated. "What kind of arsehole do you think I am? You think I don't careabout you Normies at all?" 

 

"... Does that mean you  _do_  care? And, actually, I meant mor--"

 

"Are you kidding me? That's what my  _life_ is gonna be about, you know? Protecting the little guy, especially from himself. And you're doing some stupid shit right now, taking care of this freak cat. It's my  _job_  --" 

 

"Astrid..." 

 

"What,  _Hiccup_?"

 

"I... look, I know I lied about a bunch of stuff, but... I'm telling the truth when I say that I've gotta -- I've gotta keep Toothless a secret, you know? He's gotta be our secret. I need to, like... figure out where he can go, to be safe; I owe him that. He's the little guy, like you said, and I've got to keep him safe. If you tell, and they all come to -- I don't know, kill him, or something, or take him away..."

 

She never understood, later, why she listened to him. But something in her recognised how serious he was -- the steel of determination in the body of this screw-up dweeb. The cat padded over to them, climbed into Hiccup's lap. She heard every day about the worth of protecting the weak. Hiccup was the kid with braces needing rescue from the locker. 

 

She looked away. "It's a long way to go for a dumb pet, you know." She didn't like him, but she didn't want to ruin anyone's life. 

 

Later, after Toothless had been bidden good-night without biting her and Astrid had time to think, she realised she was no longer angry. 

 

A sentence sat low in her throat, but she didn't say it, and they walked back to town in silence. 

 

She wasn't ready to apologise, yet.

 

 

 

 

Hiccup was so occupied in the next weeks with being afraid of Astrid that he never noticed his crush for her had vanished. In time, though, his terror receded too, and something replaced it. At the beginning, they talked occasionally during defence class. Then, they would hang out sometimes. Soon enough, Toothless even played with her. She wasn't so bad. 

 

"Why do you keep designing all that junk for him?" She asked, over homework at the public library. He started. He hadn't thought she could see him doodling. 

 

"I... I like making stuff. And, you know, I sort of feel obligated." 

 

She tapped her pencil, and frowned at a cosine that wasn't co-operating. "You made those claws and the teeth, he can defend himself; I think you're good. Why do you feel so 'obligated' to make him more things? It's not like it's your fault he's a freak." 

 

He swallowed. 

 

Oh, god.

 

Somehow, his voice was even.

 

"I like seeing him happy, I guess. He's my cat."

 

"He's spoiled, is what."

 

"Hey!" 

 

She smiled.   

 

His hand shook so badly he could not write for the next fifteen minutes. 

 

 

 

 

“So, what did you do today, son?”

 

Asking only became more hopeless as time passed on, but Hiccup treasured the question every time. He was saving up attention for when his dad stopped bothering.

 

He struggled to chew a piece of his steak, already cut into near-microscopic bits. Stoick waited. Hiccup swallowed and coughed, reaching for water.

 

“I, er. I hung out with Astrid again. We did some stuff. I went to her house. I bought her a soda,” he shrugged, grasping, hoping details were superfluous.

 

“That’s… good. She’s an excellent young woman. Lots of promise. It’s good you two are friends.”

 

“Yeah, we’re perfect opposites. Together we might make a complete person!” Hiccup laughed, tone cruel, an incomplete smile on his face. It helped soften the blow that was coming.

 

“No, son, what I meant was that -- Astrid is a fine young person, a… a good influence, I think.” And the blow landed.

 

“Mhm.” Hiccup hid his face behind his water-glass. “She’s gonna whip me into shape, definitely.”

 

His father sighed.

 

“Aside from meeting Astrid, has the defence class gotten better?”

 

A snort, and a painful amount of water sudden-ensconced in Hiccup’s throat. He coughed, and his dad thumped his back one-handed. “No, nope. Though I got through this week without any new bruises, which is a first. Astrid thinks I ought to just give it up already.”

 

Stoick frowned, his praises for Astrid tasting sour. Hiccup knew his dad was committed to his learning something about fighting; he supposed it was an attempt to compensate. Compensation paid only to himself, with Hiccup as the reluctant arbiter between Stoick the Attentive and Stoick the Disappointed.

 

Hiccup pushed his food around with an absent fork. He wasn’t really hungry, but his dad wanted to see him put meat into his twig body. He cut his steak-cubes in half again. For the fourth time. He was too tired to think of what fraction of a steak he was eating anymore. “Anyway, you know. Whatever. So, what -- what did you do today, Dad?”

 

His dad sighed, and it shook the table. “The usual. Monstrous is on the move again. Got some information about possible whereabouts of the DRAK Corps, but nothing proved yet.” He looked over at his son, who ate his steak as if he were whittling it. “Though if the DRAK Corps intel turns out to be true, I’ll probably have to skip town to go deal with it.” Hiccup looked up. His dad leveled a finger at him, and he resembled more in that moment Skullcrusher than a single father. “Now, the last time I left town we had that sneak attack, The Great Uncle. I don’t want you messing about in the lab again, Hiccup. If something goes wrong while I’m gone, you’re not to get caught in the middle of it; you understand? You’ve been lucky, but I don’t trust luck with my only son.”

 

Hiccup looked away from his father’s iron stare. It was heavy with irritation, ire, and discomfort.

 

Stoick thrust out a hand. “Deal?”

 

“You’d think I wanted to go off and fight monsters myself from how you’re carrying on.”

 

“Deal?”

 

“I… ugh. Okay. Deal.”

 

His father managed half a smile. Hiccup tried to return it.

 

Really, he tried.

 

 

 

 

"But anyway, your dad and Gobber got in, like, this huge shouting match! It was so intense. Gobber was adamant we all should stay behind. Said we weren't ready and junk."

 

Hiccup kicked a can away. "I can see that. He's a bit protective."

 

Astrid's laugh was so sudden it made him jump. "What? Gobber, protective? No way."

 

He frowned. "Yeah way! He's like... super, er, hover-y. He's like a mother duck. Or whatever it is they say."

 

"Maybe to  _you_  he is, Normie, but he doesn't give a shit about us." She poked him in the chest, and it almost knocked him over. "And it's 'mother hen'. Not duck."

 

"'Hen', right." He rubbed where she'd touched him, wondering if it was going to bruise. "And can you stop calling me a 'Normie' already?"

 

"Shit, right. Sorry." 

 

"S'okay..."   

 

They continued their stroll. He walked tight-rope on the kerb; Astrid put a hand to his side when he lost his balance. Toothless padded ahead, chasing twilight birds and exploring. 

 

"So, what did my dad say?"

 

"Hmm? Oh, he eventually agreed. That's why I'm here, and not off on my first assignment."

 

"... My condolences?"

 

"Huh?"

 

"For your loss. No adventure for you this week-end. Boo-hoo."

 

She shoved her hand rough into his face and pushed, grinning. He yelped, but she caught his shirt before he could finish toppling. 

 

He righted himself, voice squeaky. "You know, Astrid Hofferson, you're going to kill me one day!" There was no line between facetiousness and indignation, for him. "Not to mention, you're terrorizing a Normal person! That's in violation of the Superhero Code of Ethi-- " 

 

Her hand stopped his prattling mouth. "Hiccup, shut up." Astrid was looking intent down the dimming road. He followed her gaze. 

 

They were alone on the quiet Saturday street, no cat in sight.    

 

Hiccup began instantly panicking. 

 

"Toothless, buddy? Hey, where are you? Toothless?" He left the kerb and darted every direction. "Astrid! Where was he, when did you last see him?" 

 

"Er, he was down by the footpath, doing his thing, you know. Hiccup, calm down. We'll find him." 

 

He gasped fumbling-frantic, and flailed his arms. "Oh my god, we've lost him, I've killed him, they're gonna dissect hi-- " 

 

She grabbed his forearm. "You're being an idiot. Come on." They came to the T-intersection at street's end, and looked down each way.   

 

"Toothless! It's me, bud, come on. Come on out. Please." 

 

Astrid's superior senses picked up a faint meow. She put her ear to the kerb, and laughed. 

 

"What the hell. He's in the sewer."

 

Hiccup threw himself on his front, thrust his face through the slots in the drain. "Toothless? Are you down there? Please be down there." Toothless, deep below, yipped at his stupid human, who called with cheeks mashed from the opening above and braces glinting. Hiccup sighed relief. "Oh, thank god. If you hadn't been here, I'd have embarrassed myself like this in front of Astrid for nothing." She laughed behind him. "Say, bud, er, follow-up question: what are you doing down there?"

 

Toothless sniffed the gurgling water, and gestured with his head. He paced and growled.

 

Hiccup pried himself out. "I think he smells something. He wants us to check it out!" 

 

"That's brilliant, but neither of us can fit through there. Also: sewer. Ew."

 

"But, Astrid: your week-end adventure!" His hands painted a sarcastic vista and his voice cracked. "It's a search for whatever he smells at the end of the rainbow!"

 

"But, Hiccup: it's a  _sewer._ There's a lot of smelly things in sewers." 

 

"Yeah, but Toothless is a  _super-cat!_ Also... he probably won't come up until we indulge him."

 

"He's spoiled, and he'll be a super- _smelly_ -cat by the end of this. And we will be, too."

 

"You don't have to come, you know. I'll go by myself."

 

"Reverse psychology, now? Cute. But you won't last five minutes without me."

 

"That'll be a good gravestone: 'Hiccup Haddock, met his end following a cat four and a half minutes into the sewer. God bless that stupid kid.' The trail of limbs will go on forever!"

 

"Don't even joke about that. You're, like, a literal twig. I could snap you in half." She turned and cast about for a manhole.

 

"Please don't." He followed her. "What are you doing?"

 

She lifted the slotted hole-cover with easy strength and dumped it by his feet. They looked into the squishy pit. Toothless snapped at them to hurry up.

 

She looked at him, his face already showing off his stupid lopsided teeth.

 

"I hate you," Astrid said, shrugging off her sweatshirt. 

 

"You're too good to me," Hiccup grinned, throwing himself into the dark. 

 

 

 

 

 

In retrospect, in a lifetime of Stupid Decisions, Hiccup should have seen the outcome of this one coming.

 

But, nope. 

 

So here they were, at the end of the tunnel; Astrid stood protective before him as they watched in horror and fascination. A horde of creatures, glowing many-coloured and bristling extra limbs, waited upon the most disgusting thing Hiccup had seen -- waking, or in nightmares. And he had a rather active imagination.

 

It moved, its plates shifting to quake their nerves. Feelers clawed at air and ensnared some unfortunate servants. Many eyes blinked, and blinked, and swerved. Yellow exhaust crept out of its orifices. Hiccup held Astrid's arm tighter, and for once she didn't even think to tease him. 

 

The stench alone paled him. Toothless huddled against his chest, frightened, for the first time Hiccup had ever seen him.  

 

The flock of insects rendered morsels to the master, but it hungered still. Under its exoskeleton, pulsating bulbs glowed. It began to claw itself laboriously up, rocking on its many legs, as it snapped high for more food, more food, for it was famished. The putrid water delivered more trembling subjects, little roaches and distorted snails lying on their backs, and Astrid lifted Hiccup bodily away as a rat with burst intestines floated past. The foul falls the water made out of their pipe was a horrid yellow colour, and it was not stained so from natural matters.  

 

The mutant's court had assembled, and it passed harsh sentence. 

 

Screaming swarms of transformed rodents and arthropods fled, but they were no match for its pincers and jaws. Astrid threw Hiccup, still clutching Toothless, over her shoulder and ran. The Monster lumbered up and scuttled awful around, crushing many, and tasted juicier meats on the air as it approached. It squeezed through the sewer-pipe, losing no footing in the trickle, and snapped hard at the humans’ heels. The rats took the blow. Hiccup held down vomit hard. 

 

When they were clear in the nigh-moonlight again, stinking foul and gasping, he let himself be sick. 

 

Astrid watched him retch, and took a shaky hand from her mouth. "What ... what do you think that was?"

 

His face was still in the bin. He flopped back on the wet grass, and caught his breath. "Freaky as hell." Toothless padded up and nuzzled him, and he patted him, touch ghostly. 

 

She couldn't find a smile. "It's like... it's like that thing is the  _queen_ or something. But they're all... something happened to them. Like, they're all mutated.... What do you think  _it_ was originally?"

 

"I don't even know. Don't  _want_ to know."

 

"You don't think there was some sort of accident, like a spill or something? Upstream? Or... I don't know, but it freaks me out thinking that they're all just randomly mutating in the vacant factory. It’s so close to town.”

 

He rolled over, looking at her at last, and then turning back away. Toothless curled up, pretending not to shake against him.   

 

"Astrid... um."

 

"What?"

 

"Er. Maybe it's not random. I think you're right, there may have been a -- a spill."

 

"Probably. I wish I'd thought to take some pictures; we need to talk to your dad about it."

 

"Astrid, we can't."

 

"What? Why not?"

 

His face was grave. He looked suddenly much older than fifteen years. "Because I think it's my fault."

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Hiccup’s homework was scattered about the floor, crumpled now, flung away in haste when he’d arrived. His desk was invisible beneath sheet upon sheet of defaced loose-leaf, scribbled over with ludicrous and laughable and laudable proofs of his dementia. He was glad his father was gone. It would not have done well to design such sins with an upright hero at home.

 

Two wrongs don’t make a right, he thought. Astrid had been livid when he confessed. He had to stop right now.

 

He had to stop _right now_.

 

He started a new sheet.

 

He figured he was already damned, so it didn’t matter anymore.

 

Even if he stopped, his mistakes would still catch up to him. Toothless had gained and lost much from a little drink of tainted water. Toothless was his fault, his greatest achievement, his best bud. He’d do anything for Toothless. He couldn’t leave him.

 

That monster, that awful, swollen, green beast of death, grown so by consuming the rest of the draught that drifted down the sewer-- that was his fault too, and his biggest failure, his worst sin. He’d do anything necessary to put that thing down. He couldn’t turn a blind eye.

 

He looked at his papers again, and again, until he slept upon them. The next morning, a supervillain outfitted with a flying suit, rocket-launchers, and iron-shod madness came rolling in.  

 

Hiccup looked at the sky. Deadly Nadder was wrestled down by innate strength -- Hoark and Ack and others --  at last. They destroyed her gear, and she was helpless, Normal again. Worse, now. He saw his future.

 

He hid his designs for a super-suit in his sock drawer and left for school, as if he were innocent.

 

 

 

 

“Hiccup.”

 

“Astrid. Hello.”

 

“... Hiccup, don’t do this. Look at me.”

 

“I’m busy.”

 

“The hell you are. Turn around, and look at me. Hiccup, what are you hiding?”

 

“I’m not hiding anything.”

 

“Liar. What insane thing are you planning now?”

 

“Nothing, Astrid.”

 

“Hiccup, is this because of that -- what happened? What I said? Because if you’re pulling some self-pity nonsense I swear to god --”

 

“Astrid, please just leave me alone.”

 

“I…”

 

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood.”

 

“Hiccup…”

 

“Class is starting. See you."

 

 

 

 

He had promised. But, just as Hiccup Haddock was a liar, and a coward, and a becoming-madman, he decided he was untrustworthy too, and so went to the lab anyway, despite his father’s demands.

 

He was not caught. Toothless hung to him, casting them invisible; even when Gobber heard banging and came to snoop, no-one ever saw Hiccup working fevered there.

 

Toothless pawed the plaster on Hiccup’s knee and huffed. He stood back and meowed indignant, wishing his human would listen to him and take a more sensible approach. But Hiccup was unmovable. Sparks flecked his welding helmet, and his soft jaw was set.

 

He managed six nights of this madness before it blew up around him.

 

Literally, of course. After all: this was Berk. The Great Uncle rolled in, calling for Skullcrusher to come out, knowing full well his enemy was not there. A cluster of heroes arrived to fight, but the town was depleted. Hiccup wasn’t thinking anymore. Gobber and the five teens came running, and it was Astrid who first saw him.

 

“Shit! Hiccup, get out of here! Go out the back!”

 

Hiccup didn’t listen. He never did. He ran out of the laboratory’s front, faster than he’d ever run.

 

Gobber was on alert. “Hiccup? Hiccup, boy, what the _hell_ are you doing here? Get him out of here, Astrid!”

 

She sprinted to reach him, but he couldn’t run fast enough. The Great Uncle buzzed, almost bored, between them.

 

He lazy-laughed. “I remember you, Hiccup. Your name is stupid.”Hiccup tripped, and fell catastrophically close to The Uncle’s feet.

 

Gobber bristled, mixed anger and anguish. “Oi!”

 

Hiccup didn’t scramble away. He sat up, and looked The Great Uncle in the eye as a rock-covered arm seized him.

 

“Arsehole! Let Hiccup go!”

 

“Yeah, only _we_ get to make fun of him, jerk!”

 

Astrid was running for them. Hiccup only had a second before The Great Uncle was swinging a hard arm, soon to knock her teeth out, or worse.

 

Toothless was coming around the other side, teeth and claws bared and growling gleaming bloodlust. It would be only a second before he revealed himself.

 

Hiccup lunged.

 

“Leave her _alone_!”

 

By some miracle, the grip on his throat was distracted. So when he grabbed The Great Uncle by a rough ankle, he didn’t choke as he moved, but only felt his neck scrape up blood.

 

By some miracle, he had put his latest invention on as he left the lab, to best take it with him, hidden under long sleeves. So when he knocked The Great Uncle down and swung him by a leg and into the sky, he could do it, with easy strength.

 

And while all of Berk was stunned and exhilarated that Useless Haddock had finally grown his powers, Hiccup felt his ignoble end fast approaching.

 

 

 

 

“Hiccup, you can’t keep this up.”

 

His head was in his hands. His voice came muffled and murderous: “Do you think I don’t know that?”

 

Astrid sighed. “Maybe someday, you’ll actually listen to people when they try to help you.”

 

“Shut _up.”_

 

“I -- I’m sorry, Hiccup. That was rude.”

 

He nodded, head cupped in shaking hands. “Yes. Yes, it was.” He sighed, bite lost in the wake of confusion. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 

She looked hard at him. Toothless rubbed his face against Hiccup’s shoulder, but the boy ignored the comfort. Astrid was as lost as he, but her shoulders could take it. He was breaking.

 

“Hiccup…” she reached out, placing a slow hand on his knee. She patted it, and he looked up at last. His eyes were wet. “Hiccup, what are you going to do?”

 

“... I don’t know.”

 

“Is there anything you want me to do?”

 

“No. This isn’t your mess.”

 

“It is my mess, because you’re my _friend,_ you idiot.”

 

“You shouldn’t be, you know. I’m basically a villain.”

 

“No, no. You’re stopping with this right now.” To punctuate her proclamation, she stood, and seized him by his collar up and off the ground. He was at her eye-level for the first time. “You’re not going to keep doing this whole… ‘Hiccup is a bad guy and we should all hate him’ thing. It’s over. You’re gonna be a _grown-up_ about this _,_ Hiccup.” She hefted him higher.

 

“But, Astrid… do you realise… I can’t go back. Already, I’m supposed to be in super-training with you lot, and -- and if I come clean, everyone will think I’m like those bad guys -- and I was going to be, that’s why there’s Toothless and that green monster!” The wildness of his gesturing set him to swinging gently in her grip. “I was reading all that stuff written by D.B. Vist, I was really going to try to make myself a super. Once my dad finds out… it’s over.”

 

She put him down.

 

“No, Hiccup. It’s the Fifth Rule of Superhero Survival Against Damning Odds: _it’s never over._ ”

 

He seemed much shorter now than when he had left the ground. He didn’t look up.

 

“Astrid. I’m… I’m never going to be a hero, no matter what my dad says. All I can do now is… I guess put up with the training until I finish the suit, go to the factory and try to get rid of the monster, and then… disappear.”

 

Astrid towered.

 

“I won’t let you. You’re going to stay, and fight.” Her look was death, and determined ice.

 

Hiccup’s knees were water. “I’m not like you. I can’t.”

 

“You’re not like me, no. But you can.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

 

She smiled. “It will.”   

 

 

 

 

It was the worst three weeks of his life.

 

Sure, he’d had many bad times in the past -- acne, broken legs, burned-off-hair, one side of his face stained temporarily purple, voice cracks, the works -- and he was accustomed to being laughed at. He would have taken any of that over this: _praise._ Berk was smiling at him. His _father_ smiled at him. Sure, his father had smiled at him many times in Hiccup’s fifteen years of life, but never like _this._ It was a new expression he’d saved for the moment he could be proud of his progeny.

 

What a waste.

 

Hiccup’s only solace was Astrid’s irritation, Astrid’s scrapings of jealousy. Unwarranted, perhaps, in light of what she was privy too, but she made no attempt to hide it. She did not envy him his position, but she did not appreciate being second-best… even if she knew she was still on top. She was as eager as he to end the farce.  

 

They were sparring, their matches moved now from the dim gymnasium where they met to the silver-gleaming super headquarters. Stoick Haddock and a crowd stood and watched above, beaming. Hiccup felt sick. Astrid beat him through endurance, finally besting his liar’s strength and twisting his arm behind him until he screamed. She took care not to crush the metal rods under his sleeve, the bracers that reinforced and distributed weight so he could lift masses twice as heavy as he. When she let go, he thanked her out loud for not breaking _it_ , and she nodded, knowing.

 

His father insisted he was still getting used to his power, and Astrid’s victory was but chance, temporary. The only person more irate than she was Hiccup, for now he had the weight of ruining _her_ life, too, on top of all his other transgressions.

 

He worked harder.

 

Astrid hissed at him to be careful, stay shadowed, but he almost didn’t care anymore. Gobber knew something weird was going on in the lab every night, unseen but certainly felt. A delirious thought pierced Hiccup; the further he fell, the better off Astrid would seem, in the end. The only thing that kept him secret-sane was Toothless, and the debt he owed him.

 

One night, he came late from the lab, his almost-birthed world-blight in his knapsack, and his dad was in the kitchen, waiting.

 

“Dad!”

 

“Evening. What have you been up to, son?” A smile was already on his dad’s face, and it looked genuine. He could not have imagined worse.

 

“Up to! I haven’t… been up to anything, Dad! Just, you know… training, with Astrid.” He shuffled in, hoping his knapsack made no suspicious clicks, hunching himself into tininess. “She’s been going easy on me, you know, so she’s been… er, helping. Me. Not be rubbish. Anymore.”

 

His father laughed, and it was tragic. “Ah now, don’t look so guilty! I’m just curious, is all. And don’t let Astrid go easy on you; you’re her equal now, so make her understand that.” Stoick thumped his son on the back and pulled him in snug; Hiccup could have vomited his heart out right there. “You’ve been holding out on us long enough, don’t let her walk over you any longer!”

 

Maybe, if his dad hugged him even harder, he’d snap in half, crumble to dust, and he could escape this.   

 

His father pushed him back, and held him at arm’s length, hands still dwarfing Hiccup’s shoulders. Hiccup’s gaze turned to them, and he realised for the very first time how small he was. He looked up at his father, a different man now grinning pride at a non-existent son, and Hiccup felt himself shrink further, shrivelling into unloved and unworthy molecules. His bacteria had more dignity than he. From the floor, it seemed, crawling like an unmade babe, an eyeless maggot, the hairy changeling, he struggled to pull away from the joy that suffocated him. Stoick had never been happier.

 

A distant particle of dust settled in his heart as he realised that his dad had never loved him so much.

 

“Oh son, what’s that face for? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about Astrid. I’m pushing you too much; you’ve only just gotten your powers. You need your time to adjust to them, I understand.”

 

Four months ago, Hiccup Haddock might have started crying. He certainly still wanted to, but something was entombed in him, and there were no tears coming.  

 

He nodded, a perfect facsimile of a perfectly normal human being.

 

“Thanks, Dad, for understanding.”


	3. Chapter 3

Hiccup showed her the finished suit in the dead of night, by Toothless’s cat-house. The suit was rather a feat, with strength-enhancing bracers that slipped under normal shirtsleeves, a lightweight chestplate she couldn’t even punch a scratch into, dozens of belts and buckles, and a complicated-looking breathing mask. She asked what the mask was for, but then he showed her the centrepiece of his creation: a small sonic rocket, just the size for strapping onto one’s back. If one were so inclined.

 

Hiccup was, and he strapped it on and snapped the mask in place and gripped the rocket’s handles and stepped onto the rickety bridge and looked at Astrid and Toothless watching as he did so -- poorly reassuring his two supers that he wasn’t actually about to die -- and then took _flight._

 

Toothless whined when Hiccup disappeared from sight. Astrid didn’t breathe, staring into the impenetrable black sky.

 

Hiccup came back winded and wild, feeling quite ill, and Astrid asked him why he wanted to _fly,_ of all things; no super in Berk had ever been able to, and it would only blow his cover.

 

“ _F-fuck_ my -- cover,” he said, gasping, and told her he was going to fight the Green Death the next morning.

 

“Like hell you are. You won’t be in any shape to fight: look at you! That mask only does so much; you’re not strong enough.”

 

Hiccup looked close to murder, even with his chattering teeth. “If I _were_ s-st-strong… enough...” he coughed, “... none of this…. would’ve hap-happened...!” He glared, but his eyes crossed, setting Toothless panicking. He sucked in breaths too fast, too fast and too fast too fast too fast too fast and soon Astrid had put the breathing mask back on him, so he didn’t hyperventilate. He curled a watery wrist around her arm, and she could feel his tremors deep in her ribcage.

 

“This isn’t going to work. Maybe… can you do more armour? Insulation, and protection from the force of the wind?”

 

He shook his head, and his voice came muffled from a small filter on the mask’s side. “Too --- too heavy. Thicker plates plus insulation… not… gonna work. Sonic engine’s weak.” He drew a long, tremulous breath.

 

Toothless pawed his shoulder lightly, and it took Hiccup a few seconds to open his eyes and look at him. Toothless jumped, up and into Hiccup’s lap, and nudged at his chest and meowing for some moments before Astrid blinked and laughed surprise and pointed at the cat, disbelieving.

 

“He -- he wants to go with you! I guess he’s got his force-field, right?”

 

He stared at Astrid. “What?” He stared at Toothless. “What? Bud... no!”

 

Toothless only became more insistent.

 

“No way! I -- “

 

Astrid had begun to form on her face the appropriate response to Hiccup’s refusal, but Toothless somehow managed to make the expression before her, despite his lack of brows.

 

She snorted. “He’s right, you know.”

 

“I --”

 

“Just try it out.”

 

“I -- ugh.” Hiccup glared at Toothless, puffing greatly inside the mask. “I need to make... a harness to hold you in then, you st-stupid feline.”

 

If cats could leap for joy, Toothless would have. He settled for flicking an ear and grooming his face with a paw, in the way he always did when he’d won and Hiccup was pissed off.

 

When they tested the suit again two nights later, Astrid was much less nervous -- even though Toothless was only held on to Hiccup’s front with some buckles and an infant’s carrier pack. They returned, Hiccup breathless with joy this time, and Astrid smiled despite the knowledge that this meant it was not long until their ultimate test against the Green Death.

 

She managed to convince him to wait a few days, to become accustomed to his suit and work its kinks out, and on the fourth day he decided he would take another week to sort it all out, just to be sure.

 

Or, at least, that was what Hiccup had been intending.

 

That night, just as Hiccup was packing up, Monstrous the Nightmare decided to pay his periodic visit, and Hiccup and Astrid outside of town heard the sound of his approach before anyone else. They looked up, and there it was: the beginning flickers of his approaching fire, flying through the sky just as Hiccup and Toothless had done. Astrid gripped Hiccup’s shoulder, and pushed him away as she ran back downhill, to town.

 

“Hiccup, stay here!”

 

He was following her, stumbling and slow, his gear still on under his clothes. He lifted his shirt, and flicked a switch on his hidden belt. The suit came to life again, and its whirring on his bare stomach tickled.  “No way! I can’t!”

 

“Hiccup, I’m serious! You can’t blow your cover for something like this!”

 

His strides were becoming longer and faster with the suit, and he was gaining on her. Houses approached them, and they could hear shouts from a waking Berk, seeing Monstrous arrive. “I’m not gonna use the rocket, I swear!”

 

“Then just stay out of it!” She screamed, sprinting top speed. Astrid was the fastest runner in town when pressed, and this was dire.

 

Hiccup passed her.

 

“I’m supposed to be superhero now. Even if I’m not really one, I’m not allowed to stay out of it anymore. That’s cowardice.”

 

She couldn’t stop him. He was far past her now, running impossibly, impossibly fast, and he was down the hill and in the main square before she could tell him that he was never a coward, no matter what he did right now.

 

He joined a ring of supers ready to battle Monstrous, and hoped both for a heroic death right here, and for survival.

 

It was unfair, and useless. Monstrous circled and cackled overhead, throwing down sparks, and Hiccup wondered what the hell this was all for, anyway.

 

He imagined himself the one flying around up there, and had never wanted to fight less in his life.  

 

Monstrous laughed to heaven, and it echoed down to hell. “Have you missed me, Skullcrusher? I hope my friends haven’t been giving you too much trouble! I’ve been chatting with The Great Uncle, you know, and he told me the most _interesting_ thing! He said you’ve got a little son!”

 

Stoick straightened, and Hiccup could feel every heart-beat, like a fist in his gut and his soul and his mind, stamping him out.

 

“The _thought_ of you having kids -- oh man, it’s too much. But he told me something else even more interesting! He said your little boy’s got powers of his own! Is it true? Please, please, tell me it’s true! It must be my birthday; a victim all gift-wrapped, and perfect for breaking your heart!”

 

Hiccup could feel Berk at his shoulder, breathing heavy on his heart, eyes spotlighting his guilty soul, and he stepped forward. “Hey, what’s your deal? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

 

Monstrous turned, squinted from high up to better make out the tiny shape below with a voice too low-pitched for its body. The villain drifted to the ground, burning in his beautiful flames, and he scrutinized the boy.

 

His voice betrayed him a teenager, but his body was that of a twelve-year old. His sweatshirt and jeans were all too large for him, and too heavy for the weather. His knapsack was overstuffed oddly. He looked terrified, and fearless, and as Monstrous’s eyes widened in realisation the boy straightened defiant, much as Skullcrusher his father had done.

 

“No. Oh, no. Really, now. Could it? Oh my god, it is. _You’re_ his son?”

 

Stoick took half a step forward. “Hiccup --”

 

Hiccup felt he would snap at the slightest wind. “I asked a question, Monstrous. Why are you doing this? You always just come, wreck our stuff, and then run off laughing. Why do we have to fight?” His legs were trembling, but the reinforcers beneath his trousers absorbed the motion, and it looked for all the world that he was a mountain.

 

“‘Why do we have to fight?’ You -- are you hearing this?” Monstrous pointed, laughed, looked to the rest of Berk, its people as bewildered as he. “What kind of question is that? Look, kid: I know you’re probably as thick as your dad, but even you should understand. I’m the bad guy, so you say. I wreck your shit. I make your lives miserable, and we call it even. That’s how this works.”

 

Angry shouts were rising from the crowd, calling Hiccup to action, telling him to give Monstrous what was coming to him, but Hiccup didn’t budge.

 

“You’re not gonna get a rise out of me, Mister. You don’t actually think my father is stupid; if you did, you wouldn’t consider him an equal. You have a great deal of respect for him, and _that’s_ why he’s your nemesis. You think _I’m_ stupid because I’m only fifteen, and you think I’m gonna take this whole thing at face value. But, please. Can we not do this? Why does it have to be like this?”

 

Berk around them was hideously angry, and Hiccup felt displeasure and the itch to fight all around. His father was far away.

 

“Yeah, sure, I think you’re stupid because you’re fifteen, and what the hell do _you_ know? Now, are you gonna fight me, or stand there and try to talk your way out of it, like a wimp?” Monstrous lit up, and Hiccup tried not to wince as he discovered he was much too close to the fire.

 

“What do I know about _what?_ About you coming and bothering us for no reason? What? Why do you want me to fight you? What’s the point of beating a kid up? What does it _prove?”_

 

“You little super-shit. ‘What does it _prove?’_ Lemme tell you something, little Hiccup: it proves that you supers are all going down, one of these days. I come, I wreck your stuff, I wear you down; it’s all fun right now, but soon enough, you’ll all be done. And then maybe the world will be just a little bit fairer, for the rest of us.”

 

The tension left Hiccup’s body, and his pulse was frenetic with electricity and fear-thrill and soul-devouring sympathy.

 

“Shithead! Don’t listen to him!”

 

“What an arsehole!”

 

“Yeah, Hiccup, show him what you’ve got!”

 

“Come on!”

 

“Fuck him _up!”_

 

Hiccup stepped forward. The look in his eyes must have been monstrous, because the crowd cheered.

 

“Damn _Normies!_ ”

 

Hiccup was going to end this. “I understand.”

 

The cheering stopped.

 

“What?”

 

“Look, I understand. I -- er, up until recently I was Normal. And I know… it’s misery. It’s constant, constant… inadequacy, no fault of our own… But it’s not -- it’s not any excuse to… be as bad. Back. Because no-one’s going to change their minds overnight, and definitely not if we act like we’re bad guys. If we start by just getting along, then, maybe… maybe things will be better, for Normal people, and for supers. Maybe it won’t matter anymore.” And Hiccup Haddock, Berk’s newest-grown super, extended a hand.

 

“Hiccup, what are you _doing?”_

 

“Son, get back here.”

 

Monstrous the Nightmare stared at the hand.

 

“Please. Please, let’s… we can let this end. Supers and Normal people don’t have to be at odds. One of us has to take the high road.”

 

_“Hiccup!”_

 

“Is he mad?”

 

“Hiccup, you’re a super now! Take him _down!”_

 

Monstrous the Nightmare looked for all the world unsure, and he brought forth a hand, too, and accepted Hiccup’s peace-making shake, and not even the trees above made a sound.

 

Then Stoick stepped forward, and Monstrous remembered where he was. He seized Hiccup’s forearm in a furious hand and cackled, and Hiccup screamed, and it was over.

 

Monstrous’s flames kindled alive again, and they found Hiccup. He shrieked, but his skin did not burn; the fabric of his too-heavy sleeve went up instead, and everything he had ever wanted and worked for burned away as his arm was bared to the whole of Berk and all could see, plain as day, the reinforcers and rods and heavy coils that coated his body and made him appear better than Normal.

 

They were almost a perfect match for Monstrous’s.

 

“No! _No!_ Let me go! Let me _go!”_

 

Monstrous had not enjoyed victory this much in so long. “Oh, wow. So that explains it. Look at that! That’s a pretty impressive rig you’ve got there, kid!” Hiccup clutched his arm, trying in vain to cover it, and pushed himself away. “It’s a nice piece of work! Did someone make that for you, or is it yours?” He laughed. “Of course, what was I thinking; of course, it’s yours. Why hide it otherwise? Neat trick, kid, but truth is you’re in the same boat as me, aren’t you?”

 

He was the only one around speaking. There were no calls, no jeers, no curses from the crowd. Hiccup was alone, with only his naked self and the sky.

 

“Hey, do you still have your designs for that? I’d love to take a look at them. Or, no! Wait!”

 

Astrid stepped forward, but Hiccup couldn’t see her.

 

“Better yet: why don’t you and me go on a little holiday; get away from all this, these supers, and invent something _really_ wild?”

 

“Shut up!” Hiccup said, almost tearful. “Just leave us the hell alone! Leave _me_ alone!”

 

Monstrous shook his head and tutted. “Sorry, kid, but the only “we” here is between you and I.”

 

“Shut _up!_ ”

 

“Aw hell. Look at that,” Monstrous said, turning to their audience, which did not respond, “I’ve made the poor kid cry. Look, you’re gonna just have to deal with it; that’s life. You’re on your own here.”

 

Hiccup was.

 

“Now, are you gonna come with me? Because if not, then I think it’s about time we fought.”

 

“I’m never going to go with _you.”_

 

“Right, then.”

 

“ _Hiccup!”_ Astrid screamed.

 

And Monstrous swung.

 

Hiccup dodged the blow with enhanced speed, remembering a move Astrid had used and punching Monstrous in the shoulder with a fireproof glove. Monstrous leaned back.

 

“Whoo, almost made me stagger that time! Come on, you can do better than that! Let’s really put your rig to the test!”

 

Hiccup jabbed again, dodging an overhead swipe to put on his second glove, and finding himself tackling Monstrous before he knew what he was about. Monstrous fell, but took Hiccup with him, and Hiccup was suddenly tumbling on his own and swiping at the ground and skidding to a stop on his haunches before he looked up.    

 

A burst of heat assaulted him, and he yelped as he was engulfed sudden in a flame-circle, sweating him and lighting spiteful the eyes of Berk all around him, beyond the fire. Monstrous was flying; he shot flame at Hiccup again, and Hiccup was losing ground to which he could evade the fire. There was no-where to go.

 

“How do you like that, huh? Or that? Hey, Skullcrusher: how do you want your traitor son, medium or well-done?”

 

No-where but up.

 

Hiccup tore off his knapsack, on his knees for a precious second, and he unfolded his sonic rocket and strapped it on; just as he dodged another flaming projectile, he slammed himself into the air before his hands were fully around his controls, and he spun wild for a moment before righting himself and tackling Monstrous again, who was shooting fire at Hiccup’s immobile father.

 

The next moments were the most harrowing of his life. Monstrous clawed, burned, and grappled with him, and Hiccup deflected everything he could, putting everything he and his suit had into holding Monstrous’s flaming hands away from his eyes. His throat was burned from the air and the smoke, but every moment he took to cough or blink itch-tears away was priced too high.

 

They rocked and teetered and fell in spurts in the air, and fire was falling everywhere, and Hiccup was burned already, but he didn’t dare back down. Monstrous flew to evade him, looking to set houses on fire, and it was all Hiccup could do to hold him off. Monstrous slapped him in the face and rocketed up, and Hiccup pushed his suit to follow, but then Monstrous came back down with a howl and hit him right in his midsection and Hiccup felt his suit’s engine jerk and overheat and then shudder to a stop against his belly and in his heart.

 

“Shit!”

 

He was falling.

 

_“Hiccup! No!”_ Astrid, below, was calling.

 

The unfairness of his situation, the closeness of everything he’d worked for, the vile manner in which it was ripped away: they all hit Hiccup like a tidal wave.

 

At least he’d never know what happened after he hit the ground.

 

But even his shameful death would not go as planned.

 

Monstrous howled rage as something blue and white and searing hit him, breaking his rocket, and he was going to hit the ground, too. Hiccup could feel it approaching, could feel the way no-one (but Astrid) had moved while he fought for his life in the sky; but just before his back could hit the ground and snap his spine and tumble him into eternal ignorance of how many ways his father could kill him for this, he slowed down, and he came to the ground with more of a thud than a splatter, and then he looked up.

 

Toothless -- _no! not here! --_ was standing over him, hissing and growling with steel teeth, and his blue force-field shone overhead, having caught and cushioned Toothless’s falling human. Before Hiccup could do anything, Toothless bounded up, claws on and burning, screeching unholy as he ran for Monstrous, who was rising with murder in his eye. Toothless tackled him, and the resulting sound and sparks were like lightning and inferno meeting for the first time.

Astrid had appeared from somewhere, arms around Hiccup. as he struggled to sit up. The frozen townspeople moved again, running up to restrain someone, though none knew whether to take first the villain, or the abominable cat, or the boy.

 

“No! Toothless!”

 

“Hiccup --”

 

_“Get them!”_

 

“No! Leave Toothless _alone!”_

 

“Hiccup, stop --”

 

“No, don’t -- don’t hurt him, don’t hurt Toothless, please --”

 

“ _Take that one to headquarters. Get the animal to the lab.”_

 

“Oh no, no no no! No! Let Toothless go! Please, please!”

 

_“...Take Hiccup to my house.”_

 

“No!”

 

“Mister Haddock --”

 

_“That’s enough.”_

 

And Hiccup looked at his father’s face, and saw only Skullcrusher the super, looking for all the world like he’d never even had a son.

 

 

 

 

When Astrid was four years old, she’d decided she was going to be a super. Young children are asked often what they want to be when they’ve grown up. “Superhero” is usually on the list of answers, along with “firefighter” and “prime minister”. Adults smile knowingly, and the decision changes within a month. It’s normal.

 

When Astrid was asked at seven years old what she would be as an adult, she said she would be a superhero. She’d kept at that dream for three years. That wasn’t normal. It was fortunate, then, that when she was eight, it was revealed she wasn’t Normal, either.

 

When Astrid was eleven years old, she was asked why she’d chosen that career path. Having powers didn’t obligate her, after all. But she’d raised her head, and answered with dignity that she wanted to protect the people she cared about, and that she was blessed with the ability to do so and would. She was called various lovely things for her answer, like _noble_ and _brave_ and _selfless._ It seemed _strong_ was a given.

 

When Astrid was fifteen years old, Berk was rocked to its core. It was the moment for strength, to protect her little town from the worst sort of subterfuge, but it was also the moment for compassion, to protect a traitor friend _from_ her little town. She could not muster any of her supposed heroism, and she had no answers to questions anymore. She felt shame, corrosive and vile, at herself for her unsurety, for not having defended Hiccup when it mattered.

 

When everything fell apart, so did her allegiances. Everything was wrong, and everything was right; Hiccup was living the wrong life, and he was doing the right thing, and they were bound to cancel each other out.

 

But everything had failed her, she walked in the rain and the dark streets to the Haddock house, to make a difference. To win, if possible. To go out swinging, if not.

 

She’d told him it was never over, and she would prove it, now.

 

Hiccup blinked stupefaction at her as she kicked through the cellar window; she came looking expectant, like there was a battle imminent, like there was hope.

 

“Astrid?”

 

She was holding his broken flight-gear, and she thrust it into his hands.

 

“Hey. You alright?”

 

“I -- Astrid, you can’t be here! My d-- Stoick --”

 

“He’s gone. He’s dealing with Monstrous.” She surveyed him. “You look awful. They have Toothless at the lab. Lout, Legs, and the twins will help us out, though.”

 

“...Help us do what? Toothless? Why -- why would they...”

 

“I told them everything. Tuff said he wanted a rocket-pack himself; they all seem to think what you did was pretty brilliant. And they don’t really want to be sitting ducks for that Green monster. They’re on our side.”

 

“I... “

 

“Of course, Snotlout might have a broken nose now. But. That’s unrelated.”

 

“I… eh?”

 

“So, come on. We don’t have much time.”

 

“Astrid --”

 

“Legs said he’ll distract them for us, so we can get into the lab. Lout’s going to headquarters to keep an eye out for us, he’ll catch up.”

 

“... Astrid…”

 

She took him by his armpits, and stood him up.

 

He thrust her off, holding his gear in limp hands, and shook his head. She slowed down, because he looked lost.

 

“... Astrid… why? Why are you doing this?”  

 

She sighed.

 

“I have to. I stick up for the little guy, remember?”

 

Hiccup closed his eyes in pain.

 

“Hiccup?”

 

“God. W-why... why did I ever make that stupid serum? It all just escalated… the lies, the monster, the suit. It would have been so much simpler, easier, better, for everyone, if I’d just… let things be.”

 

Astrid looked down at him with a shrug and freezing honesty. “Yeah, it would have been. Why did you do it, then?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Come on, you’ve gotta give a real answer.”

 

“Okay, whatever! I was a coward, I was weak; I wanted to be strong. I thought… I thought it would make me better. I was an idiot. It made me worse, a worse… I’m an awful person, now.”

 

“Hiccup,” Astrid said, all gentleness, stooping down to look him in the eye, “is that true? Are you a worse person now, now that you would never do that again, than you were when you _wanted_ it without thinking of the consequences? And besides, you wouldn’t have found Toothless if you’d never made that stuff.”

 

He refused her gaze, and took a difficult breath. “Astrid... when I found Toothless the first time… I was going to kill him. He was in pain, and someone might have figured out what happened, what I’d done. It was an easy out. I didn’t do it, but. I thought about it. I was going to bury the evidence. I was going to run away from the problem. A problem I’d created.”

 

“Yes, but you didn’t do it.”

 

Hiccup looked at her at last, looking surprised, uncertainty cracking his strained brow.  

 

“I didn’t do it, no.”

 

“And now? Are you gonna leave, or are you gonna stay?”

 

He didn’t break their gaze. Astrid knew the answer already, but he didn’t. And he needed to hear himself decide.

 

“I’m gonna take down the Green Death first, before this gets any worse.”

 

“Of course.” She smiled. “You’re going to do what’s right. I, personally, think that that’s very heroic, Hiccup.”

 

He blinked, and it was like the possibility of tomorrow had returned. “You think so?”

 

“Yeah. And I’m sure Toothless does too. So, what are we gonna do?”

 

Hiccup’s face was dirty, covered in dust from the cellar, and he clearly had not slept in many hours. His father had interrogated him cruelly, with words if not bodily. He was disowned. If hanging were legal, his would already have been done. His best bud was probably going to die, and it was his fault. His best friend was pledging to fight with him, and it would be the end of her good reputation. The Green Death grew undisturbed, and it would kill them all soon enough.

 

Hiccup had nothing to lose. He had everything to protect, if he could. That -- his reckless selfless realisation of what was nerve-wracking and necessary he do -- imbued him with a strength he’d never had before.

 

He took a hard breath. “Something stupid, probably.”

 

“You’re a mad scientist hero, you’ve gotta give me better than that.”

 

“Fine. Then, something mad.”

 

“ _Excellent,_ ” Astrid grinned, sounding wonderfully unhinged herself.

  
He gave an answering smile, relief and hope and something his father would later commend as courage brimmed him full. Hiccup’s heart was thundering flight already, more powerful than his body; but it was nothing next to his terror and his spirit, which felt, frankly, _superhuman_.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyy so I kind of have lost steam on this AU, unfortunately. But I've been sitting on 20,000 words for like 2 months now, and I've decided I'll just show you guys the stuff I wrote anyway, even if it doesn't have the in-between scenes and stuff I hadn't gotten around to writing. Most of the events that are referenced/etc were worked out but not all of them, so there may be some small inconsistencies. If I do ever finish this fic, I will have to move these chapters around and stuff. I won't spoil what was supposed to happen but there's only maybe one thing, from the AU of HTTYD2, where I think having seen the movie may not be enough.  
> So, with that in mind, this bit is from between the two movies in the AU. We've jumped ahead more than a year, here. This chapter is Hiccstrid and humor with the other teens.

 

 

 

The breeze was just beginning to bite, the first standing hairs of winter beginning to announce themselves. Hiccup wasn’t keen to wander outside for long, and shivered even in his thick jacket. Astrid laughed at his cold-reddened face; but when he claimed through chattering teeth that he wanted a book in a shop, she let him go in. She laughed again when he showed her the book he’d picked, on the aerodynamics of superhero armours. She joked he also needed a book about keeping warm while using it, and he feigned a scowl. He’d grabbed another one, about the happiness of cats, and this one she wasn’t about to tease him for.

 

They were in Berk’s closest large town, ostensibly for machinery parts. The change of scenery and anonymity made them feel almost new, like they weren’t quite Hiccup and Astrid as they had been, not as their neighbours knew them.

 

They bought each other sodas, as they always did. They could have gone for warmer drinks, but the cafes were all filled with couples, and that was awkward. Astrid took a hard swig and leaned against a wide stoop, posture less than demure. Hiccup, on the step above her, kept his knees firm together, as if to make up for her. His prosthetic bumped against her shoulder, and he hadn’t noticed it. She didn’t say anything; it was a secret touch, just for her. The plastic wasn’t uncomfortable. She could have put her head on his knee.

 

The cold must have gotten to her too, and she turned her red cheeks abroad.

 

“It’s like everyone and their aunt is out for a date,” Hiccup groused, and she gave a start.

 

She took another drink to clear her throat. “Mhm, I guess. Well, it’ll soon be too cold for their long walks on the beach, I s’pose.”

 

“It’s _already_ too cold.”

 

“You baby.”

 

“Am not! Anyway, winter never seems to stop people from Valentine’s Day. Why can’t they wait a couple of months? No-one is allowed to be so happy now, not when our laser cutter’s broken.”

 

“If I didn’t know any _better_ , Hiccup H. Haddock, I’d say you were feeling distinctly _single_ right now.” She shook her head. “You’re such a disgrace, almost seventeen and still a virgin? Pathetic.”

 

He play-swiped at her head. “Oi, not funny! That’s literally what Snotlout said last week. If you’re going to start agreeing with him I fear we’ll have to terminate our friendship right here.” He pouted, as if his pride really were wounded. Maybe it actually was.

 

Astrid rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, just ignore him. He’s not such a stud himself.”

 

“... You know this for a fact or…?”

 

“Eh, when you get creeped on regularly, you get good at spotting the guys who are secretly losers.”    

 

Hiccup laughed, and his voice cracked. “And then there’s me I suppose, with a big neon sign that says I’m a loser. At least that’s less work for you. All my cards on the table.”

 

He couldn’t see her expression. She shrugged. “Nah, your sign is wrong.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Sign says you’re a loser. It’s wrong. So it’s _double_ the work to figure out.”

 

“...Oh. Sorry?”

 

“Also, I’m sick of you calling yourself names to fish for compliments. Stop it. That’s _so_ last year.”

 

“... Sorry.”

 

“And stop saying ‘sorry’.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

She watched him, a barely-smile trembling unbidden on her mouth. He realised what he’d done.

 

“Sor -- oh, _fuck_.”

 

Passerby glanced at them as she near-rolled laughing. Hiccup tried to maintain a frown, but she’d won fair and square. He grinned, and his exposed teeth must have been hilarious, because her laughter only multiplied. She tried her soda again, and almost choked.

 

He sighed. “Come on, don’t drink and laugh simultaneously. Not that I _care_ if you choke yourself to death, of course, but just I’ve been forbidden from apologising to your parents for it, and I’d rather they didn’t think me rude.” That was even funnier, apparently.

 

As she laughed, Astrid knocked against his prosthetic, and he felt it at his stump; he realised at last how long they’d been touching. He blushed, but she’d allowed it, so he didn’t move away. Hiccup thought of that thing he wanted to ask her, but she was glowing too much with mirth, and he didn’t want to spoil it. He was comfortable, as they were. He put his chin on a fist and waited for her to achieve speech again.

 

Astrid looked at him at last, and her face was very close to his knee. He raised a brow.

 

“You done?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Good. They were about to call the funny farm for you.”

 

“Ah, how terrible. Good I escaped that.”

 

“Mm-hmm,” Hiccup nodded, with his best grave look.

 

“I’d have taken you with me, though. Dragged if necessary.”

 

“Yeah, but they’d put me in a special mad scientist ward. That’s no fun; I wouldn’t be able to come bug you constantly.”

 

“If you were a mad scientist you could break out, though. And come rescue me. We’d run off into the sunset and take over the world probably.”

 

“Well, now I just feel shitty: I’ll never live up to your expectations! We’re gonna be locked away and you’ll just punch your way out and come get me and be like ‘what the fuck, they gave you a _whole toothpick_ and you just sat on your arse in there?’ And I’ll be like ‘I was in a straitjacket, what did you want me to do?’ and you’ll be like ‘I don’t know, haven’t you turned your -- I don’t know, spit maybe -- into acid already?’”

 

“Haven’t you?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

Astrid snorted, and patted his knee. He felt their contact at last, and the atmosphere seemed to tingle fastest there, where the ghosts of her fingers resided. “Aw, it’s okay, Hiccup. Even if you can’t break out of mad scientist jail, I’ll still like you.”

 

His heart wanted to go mad, too. There it was, there was that thing he wanted to ask her again, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do it.

 

Hiccup was too weak, and Astrid was too wonderful.

 

He took a sip of his soda, and smiled at her.

 

She slipped her hand away. She smiled back.

 

Her gut bid her to action, but she did nothing. She’d wanted to ask that thing, but the air was electric now, and a single spark was the risk of a lifetime.

 

Astrid didn’t want to set what they had ablaze.

 

Hiccup didn’t want to be just another creep.

 

He was a peacemaker. He would make peace. He was at peace. This was what he had, and it was fine.

 

He looked at her face, pink and perfect in the cold; her hairband sparkled plastic stones, and he wished she didn’t look so like a princess.

 

She looked at his face, winter-flushed and frozen; his freckles and chin-fuzz came in sweetly strangely handsome, and he would never again look so fresh, so like new flowers in spring.

 

She was a fighter. She would fight, to the end. She would fight for what she wanted. She would not let herself embrace cowardice.

 

She’d face the flames.

 

Astrid pushed herself away and up from him, and stood, hands on hips. She was sudden serious as death, and Hiccup felt the wind-red in his face drain.

 

“Maybe this is an awkward time to bring this up, but I heard a rumour, a while ago. Someone told me that you... had a crush on me, when we were younger?” She shrugged and shifted her weight.  “It doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious. Was that true?”

 

His face would have been comical, if it weren’t quite so miserable. He fiddled with the fraying knee of his jeans. “Um. Well, I… yeah, I guess it was true. When we were younger, yeah, I crushed on you pretty hard. But that was… like, before we became friends and stuff.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah. Um. You’re a lot different once one gets to know you, versus like… what you seem like from afar.”

 

Misery bit her too.

 

“Ah. I see. I’m a crush-killer.”

 

“But, um! You’re, you’re a much better friend than… than you seem.” He gestured desperately, as if wanting to wave away her ill feelings. “Like, before we knew each other, I thought… I thought you were this super driven, confident, take-no-shit… ‘ice queen’, I guess, but I don’t really like that expression. But as a friend you’re all of that stuff, but you’re also nice! And really smart, and fun, and... g-generous… and I like you much better as a friend than -- than I liked you when I was crushing. So I’m… it’s good that it’s changed, you know?”

 

Well, at least he was satisfied, she supposed.

 

“Mm. That’s good, I guess.”

 

“It’s great. You’re -- um, yeah. Yeah.”

 

He feared he’d said too much.

 

She looked shrivelling-sour, and spectacularly unhappy. “... Thank you. I’m glad you like having me as a friend.”

 

“Um. Yeah. Are... are you okay? I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable… god, er, this must be super awkward, um, to talk about… this… I’m sorry, Astrid.”

 

“No, no. I asked.”

 

“I’m still sorry.”

 

“I thought I told you not to apologise anymore.”

 

“You did, yeah. But, it seems appropriate.”

 

“It’s not. I’m the one who started this.”

 

“Mm.”

 

He scratched his cheek. She turned away, contemplating the couples passing by with a faint grey-gloom, a falling spirit. She finished off her soda, wishing almost it were liquor.

 

“Um, Astrid. Can I ask. You … you don’t have to answer, if you don’t want. I know I’ve already made things uncomfortable enough, as it is. But, er: why… why’d you ask? It doesn’t… really matter, but I’m curious.”

 

She turned, tossed her empty bottle in the recycle bin, and rubbed her nose with a rough sleeve.

 

Fuck it all.

 

“‘Cause I’ve started to fancy you, and the rumour gave me hope. But it’s cool. It’ll go away after a while. Like yours did.” She tugged his arm vaguely, still careful as always to be gentle, and didn’t look at his face -- his stupid insufferable awful adorable face, with all those freckles she hated. “Come on, let’s go. It’s cold.”

 

He wouldn’t get up, and she turned to lift him bodily -- but his expression was ludicrous and she stopped, hand still on him. He looked like he had just glimpsed the future, and couldn’t comprehend it.

 

Astrid, stars shining in her sun-burst hair, smart and strong and sensible without peer, with swollen dry lips from the winter sting, frowned down at him not ten seconds after saying she fancied him.

 

He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to ask her to repeat herself. But he knew she wouldn’t.

 

Hiccup -- he of untrimmed hair and a barely-baby face, looking fiercely living, like he wanted to overturn them all again, like he’d never loved existing more -- smiled shyly.

 

“Astrid… I never said I didn’t fancy you anymore. I said I wasn’t crushing, but… that’s kind of a different thing. For me. Um.”

 

She blinked.

 

He was free-falling, and he continued. “I like you mostly as a friend, but at the same time, I also like you as… um. It’s both. I crushed on you from afar, but knowing you better, it’s something else. Something bigger. So there’s _that_ feeling, and then there’s the _friend_ -feeling, and they’re simultaneous. And I like that. It feels normal. L-like, like the fact you’re a girl doesn’t even _matter_. Even though it obviously must, I guess, but it’s not important. But yeah, I like that. And I… I guess I hope you like that too. Because that’s how I feel, about you. Is that… is that how you feel about me?”  

 

Her hand fell away. He glanced at it.

 

“I… huh.”

 

“Astrid?”

 

She shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know.”

 

“... Okay. We… how about we start smaller? How about… Astrid, do you want to go out sometime? I know we do it all the time as friends, and it’ll… it’ll still be that, but it can also be… as a guy and a girl. Like, a proper date. Or something. Do you… want that?”

 

“Yeah, sure. That’d be nice.”

 

“Okay. Let’s do that.”

 

“I’ll buy for you. Maybe not soda, though. Maybe coffee? Or chocolate. Something warm. I think your nose is going to be permanently stained that colour now.”

 

“Is it?” He rubbed it. It had disappeared to the same phantom-land as his ghostly foot, despite it framing his vision as always, red as a blood-smear on contact lenses. “Great, now I have to replace that too.” He gave a great sniff and it tingled; looked like he could keep it. He would have made the most badass false one, though. Swiss Army nose. Stick tiny gas canisters in the nostrils and he could have snorted _fire._

 

Astrid didn’t have a response for him; she never did when he made his leg jokes, not yet. But she laughed this time, and he laughed too.

 

She straightened, wanting to appear practical, but that wasn’t happening.  “But anyway, yes. My answer is yes. Let’s go out. Let’s be… a thing.”

 

“Okay. Cool. Brilliant.”

 

They were both red in the face, as if caught in excitement, as if worn by cruel cold, as if touched too long by overzealous sun, but they were none of those now. He smiled first, and the sight of the crooked teeth she’d long adored bid her smile back; and when they held trembling hands they seemed to fit in perfectly with the background of promenading couples, each young person there relishing the feeling of knowing someone wonderful saw stars hidden in them: stars that completed their own constellations and, as no other stars did, spelt in the sky the magnitude of feeling they thought nothing else in their short lives could ever eclipse, before or after.

 

They were going to go on a date sometime. That was good.

 

Maybe, maybe, someday, he could kiss her. But that was the future. And they were young.

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup was deep into the bowels of a new prototype, grumbling agedly to himself, welding helmet pushed up so the visor spiked his hair humourously. He resembled perfectly a skinny, teenaged forgery of Gobber, and Berk was only barely used to the thought of it.

 

He also needed a shave, but he had gotten it into his head that growing a beard was the key to hiding his soft features; he hadn’t yet discovered that he was never, ever, going to grow adequate facial hair, despite his parentage.

 

Astrid assured him she liked him fine smooth-chinned, but for a smart boy he was awfully stupid, and didn’t listen to her, continuing instead to treasure his tragic bare patches of itchiness and auburn.

 

It was onto Astrid that his thoughts had wandered again when the Thorston twins came in, and saw him wearing a rather hapless, helpless grin.

 

Tuffnut stepped back as if revolted, and turned to his sister, whispering for the audience. “Oi, what’s the matter with him?”

 

“... Dunno. Looks like maybe he’s been hit by a brain-empty ray. Or like he died sitting up. Hey, man, are you still alive?”

 

The grinner in question was no longer grinning at all, and flushed hideously, scowling into his gutted prototype. “Yes, I’m still alive. What do you dickheads want?”

 

Ruffnut picked her nose as she answered. “Well, this dickhead here wants to know if he can get knew flight trousers, because I guess he’s managed to burn the arse off of his old ones. And I’m here because I’m bored, and you’ve usually got some fun toys around here. Did you fix that laser thing yet?”

 

“Ugh, no. Turns out the part we picked up is for a newer _model_ than ours! But Astrid can’t drive me back to get the right one until next week-end. So I guess I’ll have to goddamned _fly_ there.” Toothless, curled in his rather over-stuffed bed by the wall, growled, an almost sigh, and huffed irritation at him. “Oh, shut up, you. It’s not my fault.” Toothless opened his eyes, and growled again. “Oh, yeah, like you’re _so_ busy, Mister Sit-on-My-Fat-Arse-All-Day.”

 

Tuffnut shrugged. “Hey, it’s not his fault he’s fat, you know.”

 

“What? No! Toothless isn’t _fat!”_

 

“Dude, you _literally_ just called him fat.”

 

“That was-- ! That’s different! I just called him fat because right now he’s being a little fat lazy douchebag. But I don’t _actually --_ ”

 

“You just called him fat again. That’s two ‘fats’ you’ve denied now. Toothless, man, how do you put up with this guy?”

 

“What? _No!_ You’re not supposed to be on _his side_!”

 

Toothless was curled up content again, but he was vibrating, and it was very much like laughter. Hiccup half-shouted as he stood, frustrated and gesticulating. “Okay, whatever! My _god!_ Just give me your stupid trousers and get out of here!”

 

“Shit, sorry for mucking up your good mood, dude.” Ruffnut said it almost like she really was sorry, but then she ruined it. “I’ll go get Astrid, she’ll cheer you up, I’m sure. Or whatever she does to make you get that expression on.”

 

Distracted by inspecting the burned trousers and tutting, Hiccup almost missed her insinuation. But then he turned lovely tomato again, and stared. “Huh? What -- Astrid? Why?”

 

“What? Are you pretending you two _haven’t_ started dating, or…?”

 

Even her brother was surprised. “They have?”

 

Hiccup clutched the ruined trousers close, for protection. “Started d-- how? I mean, er, _why_ do you th--”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. She was literally making that same dumb face as you all yesterday. She was in the girl’s toilet at school, like all _giggling_ and trying on make-ups and shit and sighing when she didn’t like them. It was pretty disgusting.”

 

“What? Why would she -- she never wears make-up, not for years, anyway… why’d she think she needs it?”

 

“Maybe because she’s a girl and if there’s a guy you like you’re supposed to be cute for him and wear make-up and whatever? I don’t know, you lot all think girl’s lashes are naturally black anyway, so it doesn’t even matter.”

 

“Wait, they’re _not_?” Tuffnut asked as he squinted at his sister’s eyes.

 

“Are you insinuating that this is my fault, and Astrid is trying to impress me now that we’re a … a thing?” Hiccup looked more than frightened.

 

Ruffnut just laughed.  “Aha! So you admit it!” She pointed at his face, and gave a little hop of evil and mirth. “You and Astrid _are_ dating!”

 

“I -- okay! Yes, maybe! Whatever!”

 

“Oh man, I can’t _believe_ you fell for that. Holy shit.”

 

“‘Fell f--’? Did… did you make the toilet story up?”

 

“Of course I did, are you kidding? Since when could you _ever_ imagine Astrid Fucking Hoffersson _giggling_ over a _boy?_ Like… I don’t even think she can laugh.”

 

“Fuck you, of course she can.”  

 

“Uh-huh. And I take it, as her new _boyfriend,_ you’ve seen her do it?”

 

“I’m not her boyfriend; it’s literally only been a week-end. And yes, I’ve seen her laugh. Loads of people have. She’s not actually an android, shockingly.”

 

“Can you prove it, lover boy-who-is-not-her-boyfriend?”

 

“I -- this is literally the stupidest conversation I’ve ever had. What, do you want me to, like, show you a bunch of candid phone videos of her laughing that I took from -- from the bushes or something?”

 

“Ooh, from the bushes? Either this romance is starting out pretty rocky, or it’s starting out _amazing.”_

 

“I -- !!”

 

Tuffnut rubbed his chin. “Y’know, we should do this more often. His face is comedy gold right now.”

 

“And such lovely colours.”  

 

“We should put it on Youtube. ‘Torturing Hiccup: the rainbow in thirty seconds.’”

 

“Oh my god, we should.”

 

“I --! The both of you! _Get the hell out of my lab!_ Augh!” Hiccup the rainbow-faced slapped them both with Tuffnut’s trousers, and wild-waved his arms, looking altogether quite mad.

 

Tuffnut pointed at the whacking-weapon. “Hey, when are you gonna replace those?”

 

“Never! Sometime! Tomorrow! Pick them up tomorrow! I hate you both!”

 

“Brilliant! We love you too, Mister Hoffersson!”

 

“Go to _hell!_ ”

 

Even once they were long out of sight, he could still hear their laughter. Hiccup swore some more. Toothless looked at him, trying for innocence and failing.

 

Hiccup sighed. “I hate everyone.”

 

Toothless gave him a look.

 

“Yes, even you. Especially you.”

 

Toothless gave him a _look._

 

“... No. I don’t hate Astrid. ‘Course not.”

 

Toothless gave him _a look._

 

“See, now this is why I hate all of you, except for her. Enough of your sass.”

 

Toothless gave him one last glance, and then buried his face in his flank again, as if to sleep even more. Hiccup loosened, knowing the motion well, and he grimaced, sighing.

 

“Aw hell. I’m sorry, bud.” He crouched down.

 

Toothless mowled sullen into his fur, and Hiccup put his chin in hand, elbow on good knee. He shook his head.

 

“‘Course I don’t hate you; I’m just being a dick. I guess the laser cutter and Astrid and then the twins and all this stuff is kind of making me crazy. I’m sorry.” He patted his cat’s head lightly, and then with more surety when Toothless moved into his palm; he stroked his hand down the length of Toothless’s back. “If you really don’t want to go to town for that part this week, it’s okay; I won’t make you. I can go myself.”

 

Toothless huffed, to show what he thought of that.

 

“No, I really don’t want to wait.”

 

Toothless shot him a sad glance, a glance too tired to be withering, and Hiccup nodded.

 

“Yeah, I know, I know, it’s stupid. But I can’t let it wait; it’s driving me nuts. I can’t start the next stage without it, and I can’t just -- go work on something else. I’ve gotta see it done. It’s who I am, I guess.” He rubbed Toothless’s ear, and received a purr, and a gummy nip on the wrist. “You can just hang out here while I go. I’ll be fine. And Gobber and Dad’ll be here for your scratchies and your food and whatever.”

Toothless meowed, seeming unsure. Hiccup smiled.

 

“And no, I don’t actually think you’re fat, so eat all you want.”

 

Somehow, that was enough, and Toothless purred. He rolled over for another nap, while his emotionally-confused and workaholic and romantically-maybe-attached human went back to his grindstone, to grumble and grin and grimace some more.

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup took off right after school the next day, and came back to his house at half five in the morning, sleeping full-dressed and vowing to bump faster rocket-engines higher on his neverending to-do list. His father would have admonished him before school, but Stoick guessed that Hiccup wasn’t sentient enough to pay attention yet, so he saved it for later. The afternoon found Hiccup in the lab again, trying now to repair the laser-cutter he so desperately wanted. Gobber had given up telling him to rest, and left him to it.

 

Hiccup was only still standing because he was propped against the machinery, and falling asleep at it would have meant searing his nose off, or worse. Not that his nose couldn’t use a trim (also, he was kind of abstractly _into_ the snorting fire idea), but still: he wasn’t the biggest fan of pain, and so managed somehow to work. It wasn’t very _good_ work, since he ran on no sleep, and to spare his fingers and his spinning head he took a break before anything catastrophic could happen. A short break, of course.

 

Short, he pledged.

 

Somehow, he had ended up lying on the floor, trying to curl under his apron and getting sawdust and metal shavings in his hair and mouth. He blinked awake (or barely so), and considered prescription glasses.

 

“I said, ‘hey, Hiccup, get up!’”

 

“H..uh?”

 

“Jesus, you. What, did you spend all last night cramming again?”

 

Hiccup could see at last, and flopped back down. He sighed, vexed eyes closing. “Hey, Snotlout.”

 

“Hi. Pride of Berk’s sleeping on the job, eh?”  

 

“Yeah, whatever. What d’you want? Did you wreck your trousers, too?”

 

“What? No. No, I just wanted to hang out. Is that a problem, wanting to hang out with your half-cousin?”

 

“No, what do you _really_ want? If you want something fixed just leave it--” he flapped a vague arm “-- over there, I guess. Gimme until tomorrow. Afternoon. Evening. I’m tired.”

 

“Ha, I noticed. And I’m serious: I just wanted to talk to you, bro.”

 

Hiccup rolled over and frowned. “Don’t call me that, it sounds dumb. Talk about what? I’d like to talk about how you should totally leave and let me take a nap right now.”

 

Snotlout laughed, and Hiccup opened an eye to pout nastily. Lout wagged a finger at him. “That’s a good one.”

 

Hiccup, languishing amidst shop scraps and dropped screws, was not exactly on the top of his funny-man game. “No, it’s not.”

 

Snotlout was a poor liar. “Ah… no, it’s not. Anyway, nah, I just wanted to come and congratulate you, bro. I heard that you finally scored with Astrid! It’s been a long time coming. I was starting to worry about you, I thought maybe you’d _never_ get laid!” Hiccup was already colouring, and Tuffnut would be furious he’d missed the show. “But it’s all good now. Man-to-man, I salute you, dude.” He thumped his chest. “She’s a good catch.”

 

Hiccup tugged his apron-hem up, and covered his face with it, screw-drivers tumbling out of the pockets and onto his chest. “I -- fuck off. Thank you, but fuck off.”

 

“Ha! No way, man, not before I get the _deets.”_

 

“What?”

  
“The _details_ , you know.”

 

“Details?”

 

“Yeah! The down-low, play-by-play, you know. First times are big for us too, you know, not just for girls. So: how was it?”  

 

Hiccup curled up foetal, an easier feat when he was shorter. ”Oh my god. Leave me alone.” He would have pitied poor Snotlout, who’d apparently lost the ability to speak any tongue but _trying-too-hard-to-be-macho,_ if he weren’t busy wanting to crumble into sawdust himself.

 

“Come on, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about! Just tell me. What went down? _Who_ did? Spit, or swallow? Is it _carpeted_?”

 

“I am _not_ talking about this with you, Lout.”

 

“Dude, don’t get all defensive on me! I just --”

 

“Hey, babe.”

 

Both boys (for their conversation was that of boys, and not of men, despite what Snotlout believed) stilled and looked to the door, but Astrid striding in had already made it clear which one she was heading for. She passed Snotlout and crouched down by Hiccup, gentle-propping him to a sit and brushing the shop-junk out of his hair, looking for all the world like she’d done this many times before, already long-suffering and worn.

 

“Astrid… hi?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Hi. Gobber said you were being an idiot in here, and everyone knows I’m your boss.” Snotlout raised both brows, but Hiccup managed to ignore him. “So, get up, we’re going home. You can be a genius later; but right now, I’m taking you to bed.” And then Astrid kissed him. Not on the mouth, not quite, but on that scar he had next to it. His colour was already so high that the additional heat he gained went unnoticed by their (awkward and eye-averting) audience.

 

Hiccup tried to grin, devilish and dashing, but he was a buck-toothed orthodontic atrocity, and it wasn’t very handsome at all. Astrid beamed all the same, because she thought his silly smile starry-wonderful. “Of course, my lady,” he said laughing, letting himself be picked up bridal by the girl he’d only just barely been with, hadn’t really kissed, and certainly hadn’t yet bedded, past Snotlout and out the door.   

 

She didn’t put him down, even once they were out of sight. He didn’t mind all that much, and yawned against her. But then he jerked, and looked up. “Er, I don’t want to spoil our exit, but I can’t really leave the lab like that. I should go clean up.”

 

“Don’t worry about it, Gobber wants it tonight anyway. I’m gonna text him to say the coast is clear.”

 

“Oh, okay.”

 

“I’ll just get you home first.”

 

“‘Kay.”

 

“Though, that _was_ a good exit, I think. You make a good damsel.”

 

He curled closer, and linked his arms around her shoulders. “Why, thank you.”

 

“And hopefully he’s sufficiently uncomfortable to leave you alone for a while, and let _details_ slide.”

 

“Did you… were you listening outside?”

 

“Yeah. Don’t pay attention to what he says, he’s a lout.”

 

“Aptly named, then.”

 

“Yep, definitely. But, anyway, ignore him.”

 

“I can try… I’m so sorry you were listening, though. I should’ve… I don’t know, I should have just told him to shut up. That was really creepy of him, that stuff.”

 

“... Yeah, but that’s also why he’s single.”

 

“Huh. Maybe.”

 

“Ask any girl in Berk; she’ll agree with me.”

 

“I believe you, I believe you! You know more about this stuff than I do, anyway. Boys don’t get leered at by weird girls as much, so we’re just not used to creeps.”

 

Astrid snorted. “‘Course girls leer, stupid. We just do it on the sly, so no-one catches us. We stare incognito.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. But we see the other girls doing it, because we know. I saw Inga looking at your arse last week, and I was jealous. That’s when I knew -- I had to claim it, for my own.”

 

“My arse?”

 

“Yeah. It’s mine now.”

 

“Okay. But I’ve still got to use it, you know. For… arse-things. Can I, like, borrow it back from you? Week-ends, maybe? We can co-own.”

 

“Of course. It’s not much use to me without a Hiccup attached.”

 

“Oh, okay.”

 

“Yep.”

 

“You know, Astrid, all of today’s conversations have been really weird. Maybe I’m not awake enough for this shit.”

 

She laughed, and put him down by his front door. “Probably not. Go sleep, silly. Work on your new plasma-gun-prototype next week. It’ll impress me even then.”

 

“How’d you _possibly -- “_

 

She handed him a small sketchbook, one he recognised from the knapsack he’d taken to town last week-end. The book must have been left in her car.

 

“Ah. I was wondering what I’d done with that.”

 

Astrid laughed again, and he took the book from her, feeling too awkward and too tall and too toothy and too happy. She was smiling spectacularly.

 

He took her hand slowly, and squeezed it, and she kissed his cheek slowly, and savoured it, and he felt his heart slow at last, after its forty-eight hours of coronary panic. When she pulled away and he released her hand, Hiccup thought that maybe he really could ignore Snotlout -- because he preferred this peaceful pace much, much better.   

 

It was beginning to rain, and she ran back to her house -- but not without shooting him a parting wave, and an air-kiss that he could have sworn touched his lips, somehow.

  


 

 

 

 

The first time Hiccup kissed a girl properly, he got punched in the face immediately after. Honestly, it was the reaction he’d always expected. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He was _Hiccup,_ after all.

 

He hadn’t intended to piss Astrid off. Really, he hadn’t; he was eager to kiss her as any straight boy with working eyes, and the fact that he _liked_ her in a shit ton of confusing stupid ways and that she liked _him_ back helped a lot, even if it was a little weird because Astrid was his friend, too. But considering how much was hanging static-taut between them, he would have expected something exciting, electric, romantic, to happen when their mouths met. He would have expected to feel something like birth, or maybe death, or maybe both at once, upon her skin, as she breathed him to life and back and he reeled in experiencing heaven upon her divinity-touched lips.

 

What he got instead was a lot of weird wetness, and a very awkward squelching sound. He had pulled back and made a face, desperately wiping saliva away; Hiccup had been pretty thoroughly disgusted, and there hadn’t even been any tongue involved.

 

So, Astrid had socked him.

 

He squeezed his eyes closed as he touched a pack of ice to his jaw, which was already swelling beautifully. His stupid buck-teeth had caught his lip when she hit him, and he had to pause every few minutes to dab new drops of blood off. He wondered if his entire face had somehow become unhinged; he swore he could hear an ominous creaking every time he worked his mouth, like a haunted-house door. The ice pressed too firmly upon a sore patch, and he hissed, making a great commotion of readjusting the ice so he could wipe his tearing eyes without being caught.

 

“Are you crying?”

 

Aw, hell. “No.”

 

Astrid’s elbows were on her knees, and she watched him looking beleaguered, and thoroughly spent.

 

“Oh, Hiccup.”

 

He adjusted his ice-pack, and his voice was too high, and a little squished, like his mouth. “I’m sorry.”  

 

“Shut up. Shut the hell up.”

 

He actually might have been crying now, only from the pain of course. “I’m -- I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

 

“Stop apologising, you idiot.”

 

“I -- ugh. Fine.” He waved his free hand absently. “I’ll be okay, you can go home if you want.”   

 

“No way. Shit, Hiccup -- I could’ve taken your head off. I’m so sorry.”

 

He tried to smile, but it failed halfway, and he yelped, eyes wide, as a spear of pain plunged from his gums and into his temple.

 

“Hiccup? You okay, babe?”

 

_Babe._ She called him _babe_ now, like it was a real nickname, and not a joke. “Y-- yeah. I… yeah. It just hurts like hell.”

 

She put her chin in her hand, looking to be in as much pain as he.

 

It had been reflex: boy pisses her off, out comes fist. She had gasped and near-shrieked when she blinked, and found she’d just casual-punted her maybe-boyfriend into a wall, putting blood all over her knuckles and his mouth, sudden-remembering that he was a twig against her gale; she’d feared for a moment she’d destroyed his lovely smile, and all his perfect imperfect teeth within.

 

“Wish I could kiss it better.”  

 

“I -- huh?”

 

She blinked. She remembered, then, that Hiccup had effectively never had a mother. She sagged as she realised his father would never have been the type to kiss his boy’s injuries to wellness. Maybe he’d never heard the expression before. Could he really have never? She’d never thought about how one learns these things; she figured it was cultural osmosis. She was fucking this whole thing up.

 

“Forget it. I was… it was a joke.”  

 

“About kissing? I -- I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me… kissing you should never, ever gross me out --”

 

“Hiccup, everyone’s first kiss is weird. You grow up on movies that make kissing look like it’s not just sharing spit creatively, and you have some weird expectations. Then it happens to you and half the time it’s nasty. Eventually, you get used to it. I’m sorry, I -- I didn’t realise; I forgot that you basically have no idea what you’re doing.”

 

He rolled his eyes. “Wow. Thanks.”

 

“You shit, I didn’t m--”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” He tried to smile again, but he couldn’t use his mouth for it. It looked painful, but his eyes were kind. “Sorry. I’m just… kind of stroppy right now. And talking hurts.”

 

“Aw. Stop talking, then.”

 

He opened his mouth again. There was blood again on his lips, his gums.

 

She put a finger just before his mouth, just enough air between their skins to not hurt him. His mouth shut, and he looked down at the shushing finger, eyes crossing slightly. “Babe, you’re still bleeding. I think you’d better do the salt water again.”

 

“Eugh.”

 

“No talking! Come on, you don’t want to get infected or something, right? Up you get.”

 

He sighed dramatic as she lifted him, gently for her but still strong enough to take him off his feet a moment. She rubbed his back as he leaned over the sink, swilling the awful water and hacking long after it had all been spit out. He was perhaps a hair, half an eye, taller than her, and their mouths would have been lined up almost perfectly. His own was hidden now behind his hand and a cloth that was tamping down the blood, and -- because she’d wanted a kiss with him, and hadn’t really gotten one yet -- she put her lips on the back of the hand, the next best thing right then, with its warm skin and dapplings of freckles and sun.

 

Hiccup stiffened, then leaned almost his whole body into the touch, and Astrid smiled. He wished he’d been able to put that look on her face, get this right, the first time. He was starting to fear that becoming romantic had been a bad idea; he was messing the whole thing up.

 

She leaned up, and kissed a freckle just below his eye. “You freckly beast. I could literally play connect-the-dots on you. It would take me _weeks._ ”

 

His skin flared pink-mottled and mortified under her lips, and she laughed at him.

 

“I’m sorry, was that weird?”

 

“Er…”

 

“Oops, I forgot: no talking. _”_ She cleared her throat. “ _‘Yes, Astrid’,_ he says, _‘that was pretty weird; I’m not prepared for that amount of commitment yet so early into our relationship.’_ ” Her impression of his voice was unsettling in its accuracy, and Hiccup laughed and winced.

 

“Y’should do my voic’mail f’me,” he squeaked behind the cloth.

 

“Quiet, you, this is a one-woman show.” Her chin dropped as she brought forth his low nose-whine tone again. “‘ _But do it anyway; maybe it can fool ‘Lout into thinking I’m a_ promiscuous _freckly beast, if I’m covered in hickeys.’”_

 

He didn’t speak, but he jerked, and his nonverbal exclamation and widened eyes came across clear as if he really had shrieked. He stared.

 

Astrid slumped. “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, that one was even weirder. Am I trying too hard? I’m trying too hard. I’m no good at flirting. I should just--”

 

Hiccup’s face was a handsome sunburnt beet shade, and when he took the cloth away from his mouth, a new spring of blood had come up on his lip. But he was smiling.

 

“’S okay. ’S weird, but… I want to get used to it.”

 

“Get that thing on your face again! You’re still bleeding.”

 

“It’s like when you call me ‘babe’. It’s so weird.”

 

She paused in forcing his hand back to his face. “... You don’t like it when I call you ‘babe’?”

 

“No, I love it! But it’s weird.”

 

“I can stop…”

 

“No! Don’t stop. Maybe it won’t be weird anymore, if you keep it up. Like kissing. Maybe that won’t be weird anymore.”

 

“Are you sure? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

 

“You won’t. Honest. It’s _you_.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“HICCUP H. HADDOCK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT --”

 

“Whoa, what? What did I do now?”

 

“I--” Astrid stopped, right past the door onto the roof, and blinked. “I-- huh.”

 

Hiccup stood as a deer in headlights, poised to flee (Where to? Off the roof? That would explain Toothless and the rocket in the corner.) and clutching an oddly-shaped _something_ with slipping fingers. The _something_ was wrapped in shimmery red paper. He blanched, and swallowed.

 

“...Hi, Astrid…”

 

“Hey.”

 

“Er. Hi, Astrid.”

 

“Hi. Hey there, Toothless.”

 

Toothless yawned.

 

Hiccup blinked. “Are… are you still angry?”

 

“... Yes. Absolutely. I’m furious, in fact.”

 

“I -- er.”

 

“Can’t remember what for, though.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

“I’m sure it was awful, though.”

 

“Quite. Probably.”

 

“Oh, I remember! It was for sending me this _idiot_ text” -- she shook savage her mobile in his direction --  “telling me to come to the roof for ‘a surprise’. I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to sound like a threat or some shit, but it _did._ But as long as you’re not planning on, like -- like, murdering me, or trying to screw on the roof or something nuts -- then I’m not mad. Well, I _am,_ because _fuck you_ , but. Considering it’s my birthday and you’re holding a giant present I can let that slide.”

 

“Present? Wh -- what on _earth_ are you talk--”

 

“Hiding it behind your back doesn’t make much difference, dipshit, I’ve already seen it.”

 

“Oh, fine.”

 

“Gimme.”

 

“Ahah. Happy nineteenth, my lady.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“No, wait! Before -- before you open it! Just guess.” Hiccup crossed his arms, trying to draw himself up to pride. “Guess what it is.”

 

Astrid’s demeanour dropped to a deadpan drawl, like his did. “Gee, I wonder. What else could be fucking shaped _exactly_ like a sonic rocket? Surely it’s a puppy.”

 

Hiccup’s shoulders sagged. “Oh.”

 

The wrapping began to come away in layers, a cataclysm of paper-bits and sellotape. Astrid laughed. “What the hell is this? Who taught you how to wrap presents, you dork?”

 

“Er. No-one? I’m sorry. My dad’s worse though. Apparently Gobber used to wrap my gifts for me when I was a kid.”

 

“He only has one hand!”

 

“Yeah, well, as I said: my dad’s worse.”

 

The last fold of red fell away, and Astrid was holding a perfect-polished silver sonic rocket, with thin red stripes and black decals, and her initials in neat sans-serif. She smiled.

 

“Thanks, babe. It’s great.”

 

“How do you know it’s great if you haven’t…” he stepped back, and began to gesture to his own rocket lying ready, but she cut him off.

 

“ _Tested it out_ , yes. Did you rehearse this, by any chance?”

 

He blushed. “A bit.”

 

“You’re adorable.”

 

“I am not! I’m all heroic and shit.”

 

“You’re adorable, and you know it. Now, lemme just get this on…” Astrid moved to fasten herself into the rocket, and Hiccup leaned forward to help. He moved a strap up her chest, and buckled it below her clavicle, face still red.

 

“Here, now, these are for your hands. This wire --”

 

“Yeah, sends the signal. I know.”

 

“Right. Um, and these -- well, see, you’ve got your acceleration, your up and your down… um, and right and left steering. You press this button with your thumb, and -- that activates the joystick mode, so if you tilt, it -- yeah, it does the thing. I also made a cruise control for you, since I figured, like, you’d want to use your hands for punching or whatever. That’s also why there’s these on the knuckles. But, anyway, cruise control is here, but it doesn’t do acceleration, it only maintains speed and direction. But if you turn joystick mode on and you turn your hands like that, then -- that’s acceleration and you don’t need the button, so the only time I think you’d need cruise is, like, if you’re doing something with your hands and you want to stay up in the air. Is that -- um, you got that?”

 

“Yeah. Turn _this_ way for acceleration?”

 

“Yeah! You got it.”

 

“Cool.”

 

“Okay. How does it fit?”

 

“Fine! And no heavier than my school bag.”

 

“Good, that’s good. My first one way back when was _way_ too heavy. But I figured you’d want it light so you could fight and whatever.”

 

“Yeah, sure. Now get your stupid thing on too.”

 

He laughed high-strung, and outfitted himself. Toothless meowed at Astrid from the carrier on Hiccup’s chest. She winked back, and gave him an ear-scratch.

 

“Right! Right. You ready, Astrid?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“You ready, bud?”

 

A yip.

 

“Right! We’ll take this nice and slow.” Hiccup snapped his mask in place, and flexed his hands. Astrid had watched him do this many times. But this time she flexed her hands too, pushed joystick mode on, and moved to rocket upwards.

 

The first sensation was the wind. And then --  a sonic boom.

 

And then.

 

“Not so _fast! Astrid!”_

 

The air.

 

The roof was suddenly not a roof anymore, but merely a flat rectangle. The rectangle contracted, and all around other rectangle-roofs were clustering together, closer and closer and smaller and smaller, like cellular organisms huddling together for warmth in the frigid nighttime air.

 

Streetlights sparked, but they were giving way to stars.

 

Astrid looked down, and saw her feet -- dangling, with only space and air and shrinking cells below.

 

“Holy _shit!”_

 

Hiccup flew almost chest-to-chest with her, but his voice was drowned by the wind and his breathing mask. He fiddled with something at his jaw, and his volume spiked. “--ou’ve got it! You’re good! I’m here, you’re good -- ”

 

She reached out and seized him. Toothless’s blue field around Hiccup’s body flickered, and then expanded to meet her. “ _Holy fucking_ _shit!”_

 

“You okay? Ast -- Astrid, are you okay?” He gripped her elbows, to support her.

 

“You kidding me? I -- _holy shit!”_

 

“A--” His voice was lost again in the air, and Astrid was trembling, still gripping him, and breathing probably too fast. But her face was alight.

 

“This is _fucking amazing!”_

 

“We -- you need to breathe slower, we should go back!” They were spinning, and the clouds were parting.

 

“No fucking way!”

 

“Slow down -- “

 

“I’m gonna fucking pass out!”

 

“Well, don’t do that!”

 

“No promises!”

 

“Let’s go back!”

 

“No!”

 

“Yes!”

 

“I fucking love you!”

 

“What?!”

 

“I’m gonna throw up!”

 

“Don’t do that either!”

 

“I think I might actually be dying!”

 

“Well, please don’t!”

 

“Why?”

 

“Astrid, we really ought to slow down! First flights ar--”

 

“No way!”

 

And she kissed him, leaving a ghost-breath of her lips upon the chill plastic of his mask.

 

“Astrid, I don’t think you’re well!”

 

“I don’t think so either!”

 

“I’m going to take us back down!”

 

“No, you’re not!” And she twisted her hands, and banked.

 

“ _ASTRID!”_ He screamed, as if she were falling to her doom.

 

Well, she _was_ , but that wasn’t important.

 

Perhaps, if she had flown with him years ago, or on his first testing flights -- perhaps she would have been more afraid of the air and death and the insanity of all of this. But now, friends with him for years, dating him for more than two, and filled with utter trust in all of his inventions and in love with her body and possibility, she didn’t even think to be anything but exhilarated. It felt as if she’d already been doing this for years.

 

She realised she might easily become addicted.

 

He twisted to meet her, both of them now upside-down, and rapid losing altitude.

 

“Astrid--”

 

“Babe!” She linked their hands. “This is amazing! You’re my favourite boyfriend! Like, ever!”

 

“That’s nice, it really is, but --”

 

“I mean it!”

 

“Yes, but if you haven’t noticed, we’re going _downwards_ now!”

 

“You do this all the time!”

 

“Yes, _I do!_ But -- you --”

 

“You’re the delicate one here, dipshit! What are you even freaking out about?”

 

“I’m freaking out because _that’s the fucking ground!_ ”

 

“I love you! You’re an arse hat! You love me too!”

 

“We’re about to smash like a couple of eggs he -- wait, what did you say?”

 

“You’re an arse hat!”

 

“I heard the word ‘love’ again!”

 

“Yes, that’s a thing too!”

 

“What? Look, can we have this conversation when we’re not about to _die_??”

 

“‘Course.”

 

And so she turned again, sudden righting herself, and hovering still. She caught Hiccup as he fell past, and turned him rightways too, holding him against her as they hung there in the air, engines purring to counteract Toothless’s growls for Astrid’s antics.

 

Hiccup shuddered, and gasped, and made a selection of horrified and shocked faces, and Astrid laughed between laboured breaths. His arms had somehow gotten around her shoulders, and he was pushed against her hip like a toddler. She reached up, slipped off his breathing mask, and kissed him gentle on the corner of his mouth as he stared into the distance, eyes wide.

 

She smiled. “Well, that -- that was exciting!”

 

“I -- that was horrible.”

 

“You’re wonderful, babe.”

 

“Remind me to never… never, _ever_ , fly with you again.”

 

Toothless snapped at her. The three of them were slowly sinking to the ground.

 

“Aw, hush, you. You boys are wimps.”

 

“I -- is my hair white? I think all my hair’s gone white now. Toothless, have I gone white?”

 

Toothless meowed. He was still brown.

 

“Well, I prefer ‘auburn’, but okay.”

 

“Oh my god, Hiccup.”

 

“What? I’m sorry, I’m a little on-edge right now! Considering what my _girlfriend_ just put me through, I think I’m allowed to -- augh, I don’t know! I’m just very emotional right now!”

 

“Aw, it’s okay.” She kissed him again. “And I did mean it, when I said I loved you. Also, good birthday present. I think I’ll keep you.”

 

“I -- okay. You’re welcome. Fuck.”  

 

Their feet touched earth. Hiccup and Astrid were still holding onto each other, and Toothless was still mashed between them, pressed up against Astrid’s chest, like an unfortunate infant.

 

“As-- Astrid?”

 

“Babe?”

 

“You were right, too. What you said. About me.”

 

“Ah, so you admit it!”

 

“When has it ever been a secret?”

 

“You do admit to being an arse hat!”

 

“I -- !” He couldn’t even summon ire. He had set himself up for that. Hiccup could only laugh.

 

“Yes, yes I do.”

 

“M-hmm.”

 

“Happy Birthday. You’re old.”

 

“And you’re adorable.”

  
  


 

 

 

 

Someone was cheering. It was probably Snotlout. It usually was.

 

Astrid tasted like alcohol, and Hiccup winced, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had to put up with liquor on her lips.

 

Despite what their audience might have thought, Astrid was only a touch buzzed; it had only been three and a half pints. Hiccup, on the other hand, had drunk nothing but water and fruit juice, and yet still felt off-kilter. Long ago, he might have thought it was Astrid working her magic on him, but now he knew better. Astrid was just Astrid. No, this was illness.

 

He broke the kiss and put his arm on the back of their bench, fingers drumming her shoulder idly. She settled back against him, and tried to cover a yawn. Their fathers were busy loudly greeting the New Year, and Gobber was singing something out-of-tune and offensive. Snotlout and Tuffnut were chugging their seventh round. Fishlegs looked between the two, terrified, and keeping time. Mister Thorston turned, and snapped at both boys to knock it off, but Spitelout winked and bid them continue. Truls and Dagny Skunkbreath’s children were making off with a platter of sweets. Ack and his wife were in the centre of the festivities, trying and failing and falling at dancing.

 

Hiccup leaned into Astrid, his cheek pressed against her temple, squished lips tickling her skin. “Hey, I’ve been wondering... d’you think supers can hold liquor better than Normal people?”

 

She contemplated her drink. “Dunno. Maybe this is the year you and Lout have a drinking contest, for science, eh, to find out?” She dug an elbow into him. “Gonna finally get you off the soft drinks one of these days.”

 

“No way. I’d die.”

 

Astrid laughed, and shifted. She often teased that dating her unlocked the hidden man within him, seeing as he’d sudden-gained a half-head-height on her, chin-fuzz, upper-body strength, and confidence, too. But all in moderate doses. Anything else, and he would have stopped being the little Hiccup she liked so much. She looked up at him. She was very glad he hadn’t lost his freckles, or scars from acne, or the stupid teeth.

 

“You baby. One of these days you’re gonna have to man up, and drink with the rest of us.”

 

“Aw, do I have to be a man? I much prefer being a rubber noodle. Or-- no, what did you call me?”

 

“I said ‘delicately arranged noodle’. I had no part in the rubber thing.”

 

“Oh, ‘kay. Must’ve been Gobber who said that one.”

 

“Must’ve been. Anyway, you’re already a man, idiot; you’re almost nineteen.” She looked at him, laughing. “You’re _old._ “

 

“Yeah, well -- so are you! You’re more old! Older, I mean.”

 

“You didn’t even drink anything, and already you’re forgetting your grammar? Tsk, Hiccup.”

 

“It must be all the beer-stink on your breath. You’re overcoming my feeble… er… liquour-holding… ability.”

 

“Yes, and apparently your wit, too. Are you sure no-one spiked your cranberry juice?”

 

He frowned, glanced into his glass. “I don’t think so. I think I might be sick, though.”

 

“Oh. Yeah, way to tell me that _after_ I’ve kissed you.”

 

“Shit, sorry.”

 

She smiled. Her breath was heavy and foul and lovely, and it was normal. She ate shitty food all the time, she was always sweaty after training; Astrid _never_ smelled good. She always smelled like Astrid. “It’s fine. I’ve had plenty of other bad kisses from you.”

 

“Wow, thanks. Love you too. You know, you’re not so great yourself right now; you taste like beer.”

 

“And that’s a problem how?” Astrid asked, and kissed him sweet again.  

 

“It tastes fucking nasty is the problem. But I will suffer, if I have to.” Hiccup sighed for the stage, and kissed her back. “Remember, I’m all noble and shit now.”  

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Here we jump ahead to the events of How to Train Your Super-Cat 2. Hiccup meets Valka. Again, unfinished, and there's a bunch of plot missing obviously. But I think you can follow these scenes anyway.  
> I said I wasn't going to really talk about the plot stuff between these bits, but to help you guys out when you start reading I will say this: Hiccup is not in Berk, he's in the city. Small-town kid; very lost and very scared, but it's in the pursuit of peace and junk.

 

 

 

Hiccup knew she was bad news. He was always afraid of women.

 

Carrying Toothless cradle-style in his arms, Hiccup saw her as he waited at the animal hospital. It was only a tumble, Toothless didn't think he was hurt that bad, but Hiccup wasn't about to ignore a fall while practicing Toothless's aerial maneuvers. He was just going to get him checked out. Toothless yawned and huffed. Hiccup was looking ahead, still as bone.

 

Hiccup only made eye contact with her once, but he knew she was still watching.

 

Toothless swatted at his human’s mouth with a naked paw, inside curled away. The near heat reddened Hiccup’s skin, and his embarrassment did the rest. He wondered again how much time they had, and looked at his cat in worry. If Toothless could have, he would have raised a brow.

 

The woman was still there, even after they left. He couldn't see her for the crowd, but he knew she was following them. Toothless nuzzled him with a more genuine concern. Hiccup's breaths came rapid as the frozen rain drops.

 

"It's okay..." Hiccup pressed his numb nose to Toothless's fur and kept walking. "We've gotta lose her, bud. Of course, we'll got lost too but, you know, whatever. Fuck it, we'll get lost if we have to."

 

Toothless mewled like he didn't believe they would, but it was poor assurance. Hiccup was right. They were lost very quickly, and she was not.  

 

Perhaps the press of people and time and his father's words and the cold made Hiccup terror-struck, for soon they were running. Toothless leapt out of his arms, paw-fire singing. They hid from the becoming-snow in a public garage. Hiccup was not rational. But there she was, again. Bus-fodder, at the stop, perfectly nonchalant. It came, and she didn't get on. She looked up. She'd found them.

 

Hiccup was cornered. Toothless growled. They didn't wait to see if she was approaching them. They ran, Hiccup hoping they could fly away from the garage's second storey.

 

Running overburdened and half-limbed behind Toothless, the ice on the asphalt proved treacherous for Hiccup. The woman came from the stairwell, and he yelped, panting desperation. He was not wearing an appropriate prosthetic, and the slick and slush compromised him. Time was up; he sat and twisted to get out his rocket. Toothless rushed back to him.

 

"I have a few questions for you!" The woman said, stride easy on the ice. He scrambled. Toothless would not abide this woman scaring his little human, and took up a fighting stance -- disarmed as he was but for his powers. She looked for a moment at him, his clawless paws and gummy growl. "Young man, I'm a little concerned. Your cat appears to be in bad shape. I understand he may be a super but I question your -- "

 

Toothless would suffer much, but he would not allow accusations that Hiccup did not take care of him.

 

"Toothless, NO!" Hiccup lunged, but it was pointless. Toothless was closing fast on the shocked woman; he bounded over and across the parked cars, leaving paw-dents in their metal, and howled for all his worth. Hiccup scrabbled up to intercept him, but after only a few gangling sprint-strides his prosthetic foot failed him on the ice, and he toppled. His frantic momentum did the rest: he slid with a horrifying quickness past them, and crashed concussive into a tire-well. The car's alarm lost its head, and he couldn't think for the volume.

 

Toothless changed course, came to tend him with distressed kisses. Hiccup struggled to rise, but the wind was hard out of him. The woman stood still there, seemingly speechless.

 

"Oh, fuck. Fucking hell. Shit." He held his abdomen. Toothless was beside himself. "No, no, bud -- I'm fine. I just -- gimme a sec... oh god..." Before he could regain his feet, the woman came over, held out a hand and hoisted him, still scrutinizing. "Er, thank you. Thank you, but, um, we've gotta go -- "

 

"I do hope you're alright. What's the rush, though?" She was a mite taller than he, and glowered hard enough to have a foot on him.

 

"It's just -- the alarm, oh fuck, um --"

 

She turned toxic again. "I work at an animal shelter. I know what I'm doing, and I'm still concerned for your cat, young man. You needn't seem so _guilty."_

 

Hiccup backed off slowly. Toothless saw him walk again; he nudged himself by Hiccup's prosthetic foot, gently directing it as his human neglected to look where he put it, and steered it into paw-melted patches in the ice he made to give Hiccup traction. The alarm was still squealing.

 

 _"No!_ Er, no, I mean -- it's just -- "

 

"I'm interested to hear how he lost his claws and his teeth, if you don't mind."

 

"His teeth! Why?" Toothless nudged him again. The woman did not let them gain distance, but they were making progress towards the rocket.  

 

"Oh, no reason. It's just that the effects of super-power testing with animals are well-documented."

 

"Th--they are? That's very interesting, ma'am..."

 

"Such testing is illegal, you know."

 

The alarm was almost breaking glass. Toothless waited while Hiccup gained his balance before pushing his foot again. "What, it is? Whoa, I didn't -- I mean, it was an accid -- shit!" He lost his balance again, and Toothless righted him with a mewl. "Thanks, bud..." Hiccup looked again at his interrogator; but she was staring at Toothless now, her expression transformed entirely. It was a shade near to wonder.

 

"Wow."

 

"I'm s--- what?"

 

"He's very considerate of you."

 

"... I guess? Look, can we continue thi --"

 

"Hey! What's all that racket?" An employee of the garage approached them, hands over his ears.

 

Hiccup started, back plank-straight. "Oh! Hello! I'm so sorry, I just slipped and hit the car, it set off the alarm! The ice, you know!" The employee rubbed fatigue out of his face as the alarm finally gave up. The animal shelter woman had backed away from Hiccup, and nodded to confirm his story to the employee, invented a reason they were there. Hiccup stared at her in complete confusion.

 

He was still baffled when she only finally released his arm in the entry of a tiny house he assumed was hers. Toothless turned instantly from bristling to purring as she scratched him where he liked best. Hiccup's tension unwound in fractions, wondering.

 

"So. You said it was an accident?"

 

Shit. Not off the hook so easy, then.

 

 

 

 

It was a weird night, to say the least. He raised his head from the kitchen table where he'd dozed. Toothless was a sleeping anvil in his lap.

 

Hiccup fumbled a tired hand, took up again the tiny photograph. He hadn't seen a photo like this, taken with a disposable, in years. The corner-date declared it to be from 1994. Twenty years ago.

 

Man, he was an ugly baby.

 

He wondered how she hadn't recognized him, he certainly had the same enormous nose. More freckles now, more hair on his chin. Not as ugly anymore, he hoped, thinking of Astrid.

 

He put his head on his arms again.

 

The woman who worked at a shelter, the one who followed him, the one who was afraid he had been experimenting on Toothless. Her name was Valka Haddock. That wasn't the surname she used now, obviously, but -- twenty years ago, she had been his mother.

 

What was she now?

 

He slept again, face table-mashed, remembering lullabies and dreaming the pitch higher, wondering.

 

 

 

 

Valka chided him over breakfast (she pleaded inexperience but toiled to make beans-on-toast anyway) for not sleeping on the sofa like she'd said. Toothless had the last word though, Hiccup whinged, and had trapped him at the table. He stared blearily into the dark tea and awkward silence.

 

Va-- his mother sighed.

 

Toothless yawned, rubbing into Hiccup's stomach. He thrust his head into the pocket of his human's sweatshirt.

 

His mother opened her mouth. She closed it again. She studied his rumpled face. "How... how long have you been in the city?"

 

He blinked. "Hmm? Oh, er, the four days I guess."

 

Cloudjumper, short fur everywhere, padded in. He mowled a greeting at Toothless, who flicked his tail in reply.

 

"And you didn't have anywhere to stay?"

 

"Um."

 

She frowned, contemplating his unkempt chin. "You can stay here. Lord knows you need to shave, anyway." She gave a small smile, but he could barely return it. "S-- your father doesn't know, does he?"

 

"Um. I hope not."  

 

"Hiccup," she said, like the name was new. "Why not?"

 

He snorted, but it sounded painful. "He'd go ballistic, all overprotective and stuff. Er. He's probably figured it out by now, though. He just thinks I'm... incapable."

 

Her face darkened.

 

"What?" he asked, scratching his cheek and wondering if she would let him shower.

 

She stirred her tea with something akin to sorrow. "You know, Hiccup, um... your father is a good man, but... I had assumed, you know, you'd probably have powers, like him. But... I hope you understand, Hiccup, that there's no shame in being Normal. As we are."

 

He blinked. "Huh?" What kind of conversation were they having, here?

 

"Your father can be very... set. In his beliefs, you know."

 

"I -- yes? He can, yeah." Toothless sat up, sensing Hiccup's distress. He meowed consternation at Valka. Hiccup put a hand on his flank and rubbed absently. Maybe Toothless could get a wash, too...

 

She seemed to sense she was taking the talk to strange locations, and stopped. She rose. A shower inquiry stepped to his tongue, but before that came forth, he asked a sudden question. "Hey, er, V-- um, Mum. Can I ask." She turned, holding plates and looking guarded. He bit his lip.

 

_"...Why?"_

 

He did not mean for it to come out so stinging, but it did anyway. It was the cruellest thing he ever said.

 

She took her time in answering, catching wet breaths. Finally, she looked at him again, hard in the eye like his father did. It was terrifying on a stranger's visage. But she wasn’t really seeing him.

 

"I needed something normal, Hiccup dear," she sighed.

 

It did not help him.

 

 

 

 

She took him to work with her. She introduced him as her nephew. He smiled stiff at her co-workers, but doted upon the animals. She watched him in the periphery as he cooed at them and scribbled likenesses in his sketchbook, and she almost remembered motherhood.

 

Toothless would have played with the others, but Hiccup was wary of his cat’s over-exertion after the fall and the excitement of yesterday, so Toothless remained in his lap. His human kept a hand on him, scratching idly, and Toothless never seemed to mind.

 

Among the shelter residents and their needs, one could forget the human worries that hung overhead. It was a life Valka had learned to enjoy, but it wasn't until this moment -- watching Hiccup's face show sun light whenever a furry friend greeted him -- she'd realised the pieces hadn’t all been in order.

 

When they left for the day, though, Hiccup was withdrawn again. Anxious, she thought, but she didn't know enough for surety. What did he want when he was nervous, did he need to talk? Or did he want to be left alone? Would Toothless take care of him here, or did he need spoken support? Was it normal for him to cling so to the cat, or was it a product of the stressful situation? What did he like to eat, what did he like in university, did he have a girlfriend, what made him smile, why did he make that super-suit anyway, did he hate her?

 

He frowned at his phone as she cobbled a dinner. It was hard looking at him without seeing purloined familiarities worn by a stranger; he was a broken mirror, image distorted as if one were divorced from oneself for a lifetime and forgot wholeness in the interim.  But his warmth and intelligence, his frankness and humility (only thin-glazed-macho), made him an affable young man: she liked him, even if she could not love him yet. She wanted to give him something; the peace she'd found, perhaps. Security, and more than just a roof overhead.

 

Normalcy, she decided.

 

 

 

 

He broke his vow of radio silence to read his father's angry and anxious texts, sending a lame apology in return.

 

_Sorry for running off on you, Dad. I'm okay. I met a woman who's given me a place to stay. TTYL._

 

He contemplated the blurry candid he'd taken of her. It would be betrayal. But she'd done it first.

 

Hiccup was not a man who held grudges, though, and he was ashamed for this one. He deleted the picture.  

 

His mother laughed the way he did, and it was horrifying. Amazing. Awful. His feelings fell everywhere, and he knew not what to do with them.

 

On Friday she didn't work, but she took him to the shelter anyway, to spend time abandon with the animals and to study the little ones, the test-subjects, and the supers. He sensed something in her curl disappointment whenever he was too curious, too eager to see half-formed superpowers in action. He pretended simply to be charmed by the animals. It wasn't entirely a lie, anyway.

 

He kept avid watch on the news, for rumblings of Bloodfist moving, but nothing happened. Toothless had a ring of new cat friends, all missing pieces from owners or experiments, and all rather touchy-feely; he preferred Cloudjumper for company, as all he did was snooze.

 

Valka took Hiccup out for a walk, to enjoy the snow and the location, and he felt the wear upon his shoulders lessen. She bought him drinking chocolate, and he remembered a fumbling outing with Astrid and reddened. He thought of a half-bra satchel full of lavender, and his missing mother laughed at him, asked after his embarrassment. Hiccup thought of his father's face when smelling it, and did not laugh himself.

 

They went to the shops together, to replace his battle-beaten trainers, to seek food he liked best. "Are you allergic to anything?" she asked, leaning on the shopping trolley, wishing to commiserate in the irritations of being Normal.

 

He snorted. "Yeah. Pretty much everything. Peanut butter could probably kill me."

 

His mother raised a brow. Hiccup thought of the first time his father had near-wept, when peanut butter almost had. He supposed now that had been the second time weeping, but the first he did not remember. He looked at her.

 

"There's also shellfish, but that's not too bad. Can't do peaches. Nickel’s an issue. There was a corn allergy scare, but that was nothing, I was just ill. Gobber and I think I might be a little lactose intolerant too, but Dad won't hear it."

 

"Oh, dear," she smiled, a tint sad. "I suppose he doesn't want his little man to be menaced by milk, huh?"

 

Hiccup laughed at last.    

 

"It's completely ridiculous, you know. The first time I fell out of a tree he told everyone I was wrestling with it! But then my leg was broken and he had to admit the roots hadn't actually fought back."

 

"What? Wait... the _first_ time?"

 

"Oh. Um. Yeah. What can I say? I was an adventurous kid. Spent most of primary school laid up, I think. No-one wanted to sign my casts anymore, the novelty had worn off."

 

"My goodness. But you were alright?"

 

"Don't worry about it. As Gobber always says, I'm made of rubber. Astrid says I'm a wimp living on borrowed time, but that's Astrid," he shrugged.

 

"And your father?"

 

"Eh. Hmm."

 

"Hiccup?"   

 

"Well, he was kind of... waiting, I guess. Eventually he gave up, but. He's kind of back on it -- not waiting but ... _expecting_ , I guess? -- now, now that I've got the suit and stuff."  

 

She looked away as she inspected a price-tag. "That suit is definitely something."

 

"Thank you! It's my life's work. Though I guess my life hasn't been that long yet, so now I've got to top it." His laugh was self-deprecating, and forced to easiness. He cleared his throat. "Anyway, uh, I wanted to ask you -- if you want, I can cook for myself, you don't have to keep doing it."

 

"Oh, but, Hiccup --"

 

"Nah, it's just, er...I mean, I appreciate it, you know, but. I can cook fine. And I don't want to... be a bother,” he said, thinking and cringing of weeks more of her cuisine.

 

"Okay, love." Some unnamed emotion escaped his grasp, and shattered. Forlorn-fond, she put a hand to his jaw. "You've grown so much."

 

Hiccup always forgave, feather-easy. Now, he wondered when and where his heart had become granite.

 

"Yes, I guess I have."

 

 

 

 

That night, he left.

 

He was about to turn in, but then he got a text. Astrid had found a scientist, a man named Eret who helped Bloodfist with his works. She didn’t have a location, she didn’t have any secrets. She did have, though, the impression that Bloodfist was moving soon. Hiccup was the best located, but he still knew nothing. Astrid urged him to not do something stupid. He never listened.

 

It was two AM. The snow was thick and innocuous. Toothless meowed at him as he packed silently.

 

“I know, bud, I know. But it’s time for us to move on. We can’t get her involved in this mess, just… just because she’s my mother. This is between us and him. Come on. You warm enough? Right. Let’s go.”

 

He opened the door and stepped.

 

“Hiccup?”

 

He turned, Toothless blanket-bundled in his arms, enormous knapsack hiding his rocket, snow already in his hair. He didn’t come back in, and let the heat out. “Mum.”

 

Her jumper was wrapped loose around her, thrown over a lacework nightdress and discreet layers of thermal unders. She rubbed her hands together, clasped her elbows, chasing after the warmth he was taking with him.

 

“Hiccup, darling. Where… where are you going?”

 

“I’m sorry, Mum. I had fun, with you. Really. I… it meant a lot. But I’ve got to go.”

 

“Hiccup.”

 

“What? I don’t like, er, abusing your hospitality. I’m twenty years old. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

 

“I’m your mother, and to me you’re still only a baby; of course I worry. And you had no issue the last four days. Why leave now, without a goodbye?”

 

He swallowed. “I… um. Look, I… I came to try to talk to Bloodfist.” His hands fluttered as she raised her brows. “The, you know, super… villain. And I’ve got to go, you know. Find him. Dad insists he’s just evil, but I know better. I’m a peacemaker, Mum; I’m not a fighter, since I’m Normal. I’m the only one who can do this.” Valka’s expression became unspeakably sad, and a mite regretful. And not at all surprised. “I’m sorry I was gonna leave without a goodbye, I really am. I’m glad I met you. So… goodbye, then.” He turned.

 

She started forward. “No, you’re wrong, Hiccup. You don’t have to do _any_ of this! I understand your father might have concerns about this, want you to be involved in this but -- I hate seeing you work so hard, dear, to compensate. “

 

“ _Compensate?_ ”

 

He looked at her again, the stone of his heart beginning to turn magma again.

 

“Yes, _compensate!_ Hiccup, you have to understand. Your father has to understand. It’s… fine, to live quietly.” She came to the door, took his arms, turned him to her fully in insistence. “You’re a very intelligent, kind, inventive young man. You’re more than I could have dreamed. I -- I hate to see you throw all that away, throw yourself out, just because _your father can’t see it!_ ”

 

Toothless growled.

 

Hiccup stepped back. Her hands on his arms slid away. She blinked.

 

She did not know her son enough to recognize the bare hint of darkness in his brow. It vanished before she could learn.

 

He smiled, sincere and open, milk and honey, sweetness and pity.

 

“Mum, _please_ don’t worry so much. You’re as bad as Dad. Thanks for letting me stay; it was nice to get to know you,” he said, his tone perfect loveliness. “I’ll phone, if that’s okay.” Snow dressed his hair and shoulders, but melted instant on his eyelashes.

 

Speech had vanished in her. She could only nod, mourning already.

 

What had died, though, was still in question.

 

“Be safe.” She raised a hand intending to pat his cheek, but withdrew it. “And please do phone me.”

 

“Right, will do.” He thumped his heart with a numb hand. “And a Haddock keeps his promises!”

 

She flinched. She did not know, of course, that Hiccup rarely did.

 

“See you, and thanks again.”

 

“You’re welcome. Good -- goodbye, Hiccup.”

 

He closed the door quick behind him, and Toothless licked his face in sympathy. The night was silent. Hiccup breathed tremulously.

 

The snow crunched leaden as they departed.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we jump to...... Hiccup Confronts Drago. Oh no. For optimal reading experience, you should totally go and put that track on in the background, because that's a great idea right? Right.

 

 

"It's a shame you are so limited in your ambitions. You can make anything you want, but you settle for what merely levels the playing field. You waste yourself, and you waste my time. Had you been less a disappointment, we would not have been too dissimilar. Perhaps, we could have worked together."

 

"Funny, I was thinking the same thing. But now I don't think so. And I don't think you really want that, either; I think you just want my suit, and Toothless. Well, you won't have either." Hiccup's stance shifted, defensive, and his fingers lingered over the switches on his bracer. If he had to use the plasma gun, he was going to lose his bet with Astrid. "You'll have to go through me."

 

Bloodfist watched his fingers. He smiled.

 

Reaching into his metal arm, Bloodfist produced a small device, one his enormous digits would certainly pinch to dust. Toothless hissed, and Hiccup willed himself to steel, in expectation of the fight.

 

A red light on Bloodfist's device came to life.

 

He looked at Toothless. "If you will not take initiative, then you are but a pawn."

 

His thumbnail pressed. The red light became a red noise. Red noise became --

 

Hiccup blinked.

 

… Everything had begun to look red, too.

 

A crash rang in the distance, and his father's cry. Hiccup discovered he'd fallen to his knees.

 

Red drilled deep. Hiccup was not bleeding. Hiccup was not alone in his brain. He had red for company.

 

As the red reached, it found purchase; its tendrils ripped out his pink bits of self in mouthfuls. Redness screeched at him, and he shrank away.

 

His hands clawed at his face and grabbed his head, seeking to tear out the worms, shield himself, peel out the red masking everything. He was being eaten from the inside.

 

Red.

 

He screamed. His father's voice, too far away. He was not in pain. He was broken puzzle pieces. He doubled over. Reeled, vomited. He stared nothingness in the face.

 

Red.

 

Toothless whined, begged his friend to be well again.

 

Red.

 

He was not in pain. Toothless pawed at his hair, scratched his arms, hissed, cried, licked, paced. Panicked.

 

Red.

 

He was not in pain, and his body shuddered. He was not in pain. He was devoured. He was glass, shattered.

 

There was no pain. He contemplated oblivion. He was... he...

 

... was...

 

Toothless mewled in encouragement as he saw Hiccup's body still its shaking. The hands dropped.

 

Red.

 

A hand came up again, finding blindly the switches on Hiccup's bracer. The plasma gun started its hum. The hand wound the dial well past the safety mark.

 

Toothless stopped.

 

The head came up, and the figure of his best friend stood. Toothless meowed, but it could have been a sob. His human's face was white, eyes wide. But no one was there.

 

Toothless began to back away.

 

Stalking past, the figure fired a plasma bolt. Glass and dust showered them; a stray shard grazed the cheek. Not even a blink.

 

A half-turn, and the figure shot at a lone automobile. A spark from the inferno landed near Toothless's front paw.

 

From the past, Toothless heard Hiccup's startled laugh when the prototype had first fired. His anxious smell when the recoil sprained his wrist, twisted smile as Toothless pawed at his nose and he was powerless to fight back.

 

Hiccup's father yelled his name in the distance.

 

The Thing that looked like his son turned to face him and, with nary a grunt, reached low and tore up six feet of asphalt. The crumbling slab was hefted overhead, and thrown. The Thing that looked like Hiccup fired off a blast, and a storm of broken pavement hit Stoick in the face, still many hundreds of yards away.

 

Toothless started to howl.

 

A hand adjusted a dial on Hiccup's bracer, changing its discharge to a laser. Toothless scraped forward and howled again. The figure ignored him, and shot out a white plasma beam that cut the street in half. A building caught fire; its structure cracked along the wild beam's lacing, and collapsed in a blaze and flying embers. Walls fell flat as downed sentinels, and buckled. Another beam, and a tower forty storeys up began to lean forward. An avalanche of rubble descended. The air was becoming solid.

 

Hiccup, in a memory, swatted Toothless away from his drawing board. He was designing a weapon; Toothless cocked his head. Hiccup explained: "It's so I can protect myself, bud. I figured it was kind of unfair for you to get all the...laser-shooting, er, fun."

 

Hiccup. Where had he gone?

 

In his form, Something seized a lamppost and twisted, wrenched it, carved up half the street as it gave way. Metal pipes were ripped out tender and fleshy, spraying boiling water and air and waste and blood, too, from Hiccup's hands and knuckles. Without anyone there to feel the pain, the city's jugular was defenceless. The lamppost made quick work of an automobile, sending it spinning, and the sparks drawn from the disembowelled ground hit pools of steaming water and oil and took out lamps and windows in waves. Hiccup's metal foot was too close to the electricity. It did not move away.

 

Toothless was covered in dust, and he clawed (with Hiccup's claws) at the feet. He yowled and he made a racket, because that always got Hiccup's attention. He got attention now, but it was not Hiccup he got it from.

 

Slowly, slowly, the figure turned. Slowly, slowly, it faced Toothless. Slowly, slowly, Toothless whimpered.

 

Fresh cuts and burns lay bare, and running blood was the only proof in the face of life. The eyes appeared almost without pupils. Sparks drifted on the air. Toothless was the nearest one here to human.

 

A sudden slash, and Toothless yelped as a laser beam almost took off his tail. Another slice, and he barely saved his left front paw. He leapt away as the beam sought his middle. Hackles raised, teeth bared, he watched his best friend for another attack. Instead, the figure switched modes. Going back to the plasma gun, the dial was pushed to the absolute maximum. An additional plasma canister from the other arm was attached. The weapon began to charge. The figure put Toothless in its sights, not four feet away.

 

Bloodfist laughed. But he shook his head, and his nail sought another button on his red device. "No, that's no good. I need the cat. But if you insist..." And in a motion, the gun turned to face its maker.

 

Satisfaction erupted on Bloodfist's face. But Stoick's cries, Toothless's whimpers and howls, and Hiccup's imminent death were not enough for him. He adjusted his control on his tiny device. The red light's flashes slowed. He wanted to savour his victory.

 

Hiccup blinked.

 

His body didn't belong to him, but he had returned to it, existed again. He felt a building heat at his temple, dust on his skin, blood in his mouth, and a trigger vibrating against his finger.

 

His eyes widened. He could do nothing else.

 

Bloodfist came close, breathed foul in his face, tutted. The villain turned and reached for his superpowered prize; the cat pawed at Hiccup's feet still, hoping to somehow beg him back from oblivion. When Bloodfist grabbed Toothless, he swiped wildly, raking both Bloodfist's and Hiccup's armor. He wriggled free, but was caught immediately. Bloodfist's metal arm pried the claws off of Toothless and hauled him away, the cat crying love and grief for his vanished human.

 

White fire grumbled in Hiccup's ear, and he was already singed. Toothless howled to raise the dead.

 

To raise Hiccup, who was about to be.

 

Then, he heard his father's voice close at hand, and his arm was wrenched away just as the string was pulled and there was a blaze of unholy smoke and mechanical thunder that flecked his face with screaming heat and Hiccup fell onto the broken asphalt, body stiff as in death.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No jumping around here, we pick up right where we left off. A note about story: Bloodfist has a anti-superhero ray thing that weakens superpowered people. 
> 
> This is the last part of what has been written already, so... sorry! No happy ending-resolution written yet, but at least an end to the battle. We'll see what happens with this fic in the future.

 

 

 

But Hiccup was not dead, and that was the worst part.

 

It took about a minute before Hiccup's body was his again. The first thing he did was sit up.

 

His mother was already there, in tears. She leaned over her husband, and with salt-blind eyes looked up at what was left of him: it was their son, who sat with limp fingers around the steaming gun and an unfocused gaze. She wept harder, and pressed her face into Hiccup's father's chest. His father, who was dead instead of him.

 

The second thing Hiccup did was scream.

 

In a boil of lingering haze and immediate horror, he ripped at himself. He tore off the still-burning bracers, his chest plate, bits of his hair, the rocket on his back. He brought fresh blood from his new wounds with his nails, dented his delicate suit with his fists as he wrenched himself free of the murder weapon that covered his body. But even that was not enough, for he was the weapon, and he wished to remove all his skin and destroy that too, and then himself, and then the world.

 

Tears stung in his many burns.

 

He suffocated on his continued breaths, clutched his head raw and wounded and expected to expire any moment. When the moment never came, he wound himself tighter and gasped faster because he must already have died, because no one could survive this, no one could withstand the weight of continued existence, after doing something like that.

 

He cried like a child into his abominable hands.

 

His mother's touch breathed across his hair, and her hands were pain in gentleness on his arms as she sought to soothe him, but her own shoulders trembled too. "It...it wasn't your fault, you know," she coaxed, but he could hear the lie. He bristled, roared at her and swiped with short and bloody nails at her face and arms until she was pushed away.

 

The noises he made were seldom heard outside of hell.

 

Another howl answered him, and he looked up to see Bloodfist take off to the sky, Toothless clamped down and without his claws in a box beside him. Toothless howled again, like the first son to lose a father, and Hiccup answered like the first animal to be trap-caught. Bloodfist leaned out the window, calling down with a much better semblance of humanity. "See you all in Berk!"

 

Hiccup started to stand, but he felt catastrophic, and his legs buckled beneath him. He was already losing his voice in his agony. He reached up and grabbed at the retreating jet with guilty hands, as if he would pull it out of the sky. He rose again, and this time Astrid was behind him, arms around his middle, holding him down. He struggled, but she held tight, and his body shook with every tear. His hands were filthy. He scrabbled at her, and she seized his hands and pinned them across his torso, as if straitjacketed.

 

He screamed harder and louder and more horrible, and his ears rang with his own din, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough; there wasn’t enough noise to do justice to the gale inside him, the plasma-blasted wreck of five years and twenty years and the crying child that sat in the innermost husk of his accumulated ages, wondering in anger why his father had to leave him.  

 

He did not have words yet, was not human yet, but he could have answered. Hiccup with his weapons could have knelt and told Hiccup with his toys just what he had done. And Hiccup the man would smile, because what else are weapons for, after all?

 

He struggled, and opened his eyes at just the wrong moment. His mother was crying again, over --

 

“ _Daddy!_ ”wailed an infant, and a man-who-had-murdered, too, possibly. If he was still even human enough for it.

 

He registered everything, and nothing.

 

His nose was running, and Astrid pressed her face into his neck as she restrained him.

 

Smoke and scorches marked his hands all over. Red -- _blood_ , he remembered -- covered them.

 

Murdering man, mad man. Bloodfist was right about him.

 

He was destroyed. He was the destroyer.

 

He sobbed to heaven, and crumpled.

  
  
  
  


 

 

They built a sad grave in a bit of spare earth, pressed by the limits and absence of time and resources. The few remaining residents emerged to help, and to express some grey emotion, though it had a different name for everyone. A shadow hung on every brow, and some cried. Afterwards, meals and beds in intact houses were offered, and a brave man in a minivan drove to find the last grocery still open. Vacancy and silence hung in the ruins and rubble, rang in the leaden sky. Snow was beginning to fall. It could have been ash. Valka tried to force Hiccup to eat, and that could have been ash too.

 

He stood staring into a little blaze, nestled between the road he had torn apart and half a building he had destroyed. His flight-suit lay in a heap nearby as he stoked the fire. He had forgotten his coat, and when his mother came looking for him with it he was shivering, wet face frozen. She wrapped him up, and turned him towards her. He would not meet her eyes.

 

She opened her mouth, but no words could possibly suffice. She swallowed, shook the snow out of his sweatshirt hood. She smoothed her hands over the many bandages on his face. She brushed his fringe aside. Her child. He didn't blink, or look at her.

 

She took her hands away.

 

"I..." she drifted.

 

He was somewhere else. She could but try.

 

"You know, you were two months premature, Hiccup. I had warned your father... that you might not be like him, and when you were born, it seemed to be proof. I felt so guilty. You were so tiny, I even ... I was afraid. But he wasn't. He always said you'd do great things. I didn't believe it then, but he was right. I assumed he meant you’d have powers, but… you don’t need them."

 

He still looked past her shoulder.  His expression was hopeless. Withering. Non-existent.

 

"I know, when skies are darkest, that it can be impossible to find hope, especially in oneself. I'm sure you... I'm sure you feel very... weak, right now, and you don't think you can do anything good for anyone but... you're more than I had ever hoped for, when I imagined."

 

His expression didn't change. A snowflake fell in his hair, and Valka's hand was tentative as she flicked it away.

 

"If you can't find anything in yourself, or in me, right now, try to find it in your father. If he thought the world of you, then you have to be worth something." Her smile was pale and sad, but warm. "And if that's not enough, then think of Toothless. You may not be who you thought you were, but he knows. Your father knew. They recognize a strong man when they see one. Even if he's not what they expected."

 

Something in Hiccup's demeanour straightened. His expression was still dark, but there was a glimmer in it. He looked at her. She continued with new hope.

 

"Whether or not you feel sure going forward, you must remember that none of us doubt you. Only you can make a difference. And we are behind you." And, on impulse, Valka leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her son's forehead. "We believe in you." His eyes closed in pain, and she cupped his cheek. He leaned forward, and his frozen-dead hands gripped her arms. She wrapped them around him, the thick sleeves of her down coat the only thing she had for his protection. He trembled, wretched. He was crying again.

 

"Shh. It's okay. Shh."

 

"Oh god," he said, his first words. His throat was ravaged.

 

She put a hand on his hair. Her baby was in agony. "It's okay."

 

"It's not. It's not, it's not fucking okay."

 

"It is. It's okay."

 

His nails dug into her coat, slid. "I k-killed my own father."

 

"That's not true. You know it's not. It's not your fault."

 

"I don't know that. I... I made it... I did... I... Toothless doesn't know that, Dad didn't --"

 

"Shh."

 

"I can't... I can't do this."

 

"Hiccup..."

 

"I can't... be..."

 

"Hiccup."

 

"How? How do I... how does anyone? How did he ever..."

 

Valka pulled back. Panic was lacing his voice. She rested her hands firm on his shoulders, as she knew his father would have done.

 

"Hiccup. Everyone's only human."

 

He looked full at her, and his hands fell away. His mouth twisted, and he looked into the fire again. It was angry and anguished, a fire stoked in a dark hour. She could see the first blush of dawn on the horizon, behind him. The light snow had the faintest purple tinge, and orange street lamps lit patches in the breathless night. The snow would be gone by sunrise. The grass would still grow.

 

Hiccup rubbed at his tears, studied his damp fingers, judged his hands. Ordinary hands, clean and cold, maybe, but ordinary. The nails were short and useless, and the knuckles in disrepair. Broken reinforcers had failed to protect them; his father had wished Hiccup's hands were sturdier. But Toothless liked scratches from them better than any others. He looked back at his mother, and decided. With unsure small breaths he took a step away from her, and reached down; he grabbed his discarded flight-suit, brushed the dust and snow away. With shaking blue fingers he slipped on his bracers again, fumbling with the buckles. Valka reached in to help.

 

"Thanks," he sniffed, voice stale. She nodded.

 

She tugged soft gloves over his white palms and held them. Inside his mother's grasp, within the metal protecting his forearms, underneath the weapons he'd built and regretted, his hand turned.

 

He closed his fist. Hiccup looked at his mother.  

 

Light blinked from beneath the dark clouds.

  
  
  


 

 

Without Toothless, the race to Berk was agony. Hiccup's breathing mask was broken in two places, and the wind was wont to suffocate him. His mother's suit was intact, and she flew with Gobber. Astrid followed Hiccup close. The mood was oppressive.

 

Their first view of home was a smoky sky behind the mountains. The bay was boiling, and they saw as they passed the ridge that flocks of gulls and geese were blown helpless by a terrible whirlwind. Hiccup led the party in ducking low to avoid the gale. Bloodfist's weakening field began to affect them before they got any further, and they dropped out of the sky still far outside of the town, seeing it trampled by the purloined war machine. Hiccup struggled to stand in the steep grass.

 

"Right. This is it," he said, tone without authority. He sounded terrified.

 

Astrid frowned. "Hiccup --"

 

"We really can't go any further. The wind will take us down, and you guys will lose your powers. You should all just... stay here."

 

"What, while you go and have all the fun?"

 

Hiccup was not in the mood for Tuffnut's enthusiasm. "I have to try to take out the field. If I can get that offline, then you guys can all come in and help out. The signal will be, uh... four shots in the sky. But I need to get Toothless first. We good? Yes? Okay." He nodded at their anxious faces. "So. Er, see you."

 

It wasn't much of a goodbye, but there was still a chance it wouldn't have to be. He sped low over the soft hills into the outskirts of town, hoping he was right about where Bloodfist had taken Toothless. The weakened townspeople peeked out at him from cellar windows and he put his fingers on his lips as he passed, hoping he would only have to sacrifice one life today.

 

Then, as he reached the intersection before the post office, he started as though hitting an invisible wall, and tumbled out of the air. He sat up. Oh, no.

 

His edges were flicked by red flames, and he felt nothingness began to gnaw on him. It was five hours ago, and his father was soon to be dead. Panic began to erode him, too, but he remembered his mother, a soothing light surrounded by grey. Toothless's warmth, blue fire. It was now, and he had to get to Toothless. He was still wearing the gloves his mother had put on him. He rose, queasy, and began to speak to himself.

 

"I'm sorry, Dad. I... I'm sorry I wasn't as strong as I thought. I'm so sorry."  He took a step, and his leg buckled. He righted himself and took to the air again. "I can only assume you'd be furious. It's okay; I'm furious enough for us both. I've got that covered, at least..." Tears came to his eyes, and not only from the wind.

 

"I think Mum would probably not want you to be mad. Maybe you would listen to her, and wouldn't be mad after all. I think that's worse. But I also hope she's right. I hope you really were that proud of me."

 

His litany helped. Concentrating only on moving his mouth and gripping his rocket controls, he could keep the red from spreading, leaping into the hole caused by his fragility.

 

"Mum. I never dreamed of you, but you were one come true. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you. And I'm sorry."

 

He continued talking. He was coming up on his old workshop fast. The door was open.

 

"I hope we can have time, Mum. And Astrid, too: I hope we have time. To work it out. Us and all our junk. There’s stuff I have to tell you."

 

He was running as soon as his legs met the ground. Then, as he passed the threshold, his body halted, and fear and oblivion began to take him again as he felt a cloud pass over his senses.

 

He pushed himself forward and into a walk. His ears and temples were brim-full with a red pounding. A high hum pinched the air. His hands and legs were moving, but he forgot where he was going. He moved forward, hoping it was the right direction.

 

He found stairs, heaved himself up. His nails dug into the wood, and splinters came. Pain pierced the cloud. He mounted the new storey, tore off a glove and bit his own palm, to continue on. His legs were unco-ordinated, and one made abnormal noises. He could not remember why. His teeth were dull. There was no pain anymore. His hand fell to his side; redness leaked from him unabated.

 

He could hear whimpers: Toothless, his failing self said. His weak teeth, and metal replacements for a friend. He remembered desperation. He needed Toothless. A new woman, a mother, told him to think of Toothless. He put out his hand and stumbled forward.

 

A table, with red and white, blinks and dials, a machine's breath, and a black ragged gasping. Toothless full of tubes. Soft cries and whimpers. His fault, he thought. They were in an alleyway, and he had done this. Toothless's head turned, and his eyes widened. Toothless's human looked back. His fingers were far away.

 

"I'm... sorry. Toothless. Toothless." He did not know where his emotions came from, but he felt them just the same. He clutched the remainders of himself.

 

"I didn't mean to. I would never hurt you. I didn't mean to..." He felt the meanings of his words and pleas slip away, but he hoped Toothless would still remember. "I don't know what happened; help me, bud."

 

"I don't trust myself. I trust you. Do you trust me, still? You're... you're my friend. You're my best friend, Toothless." He remembered that. He forgot what else he'd said. He said that last word again. "Toothless." It was an important word. He knew he mustn't forget it. "Toothless. Toothless."

 

Speech was leaving him, but he remembered something else important. He had to find the words for it. "Love... love, Toothless."

 

It was nothing compared to the aching cacophonic colours he tasted deeper, but it would have to do. He couldn't remember the rest of himself. The colours were fading.

 

Even red was receding. He awaited blackness, though he thought it infinity.

 

His senses were spent. He had an arm, he knew that. It had a hand, and fingers. It was kept extended; it was important.

 

The sounds of a weak struggle and friendly mewls. A lingering emotion inside.

 

Warmth at the fingertips. Reaching further, for the legs beneath would not move.

 

Warmth, and the barest touch of a whisker at the end of the arm.

 

A presence. There was a word for it, but it had been forgotten.

 

Sounds of struggle, stronger. Stronger still. There was fuel in the other.

 

More vocalizations, and the brush of a different softness, many more strands than before. A touch, and warmth.

 

The colour blue, in a memory.

 

Struggle. A snap, and a louder vocalization and sounds of movement.

 

A stillness in the body and the hand that awaited.

 

Erosion.

 

Blankness so close, enticing.

 

Eyes closed, accepting.

 

A desperate vocalization and scramble.

 

The last strands of emotion responded, held on to the light at the end of the closing tunnel.

 

A heroic effort in movement, on the other side. A heroic effort in refusing the embrace of deep everything, within.

 

And then, many touches all at once at that last frontier of perception -- an entire furry head cupped in his limp hand.

 

Hiccup blinked.

 

_Toothless!_

 

Hiccup could have cried as he willed himself forward, seizing Toothless tight where he lay on the table. The overhead light near blinded him, but Hiccup's face was deep in his friend's warm blackness, Toothless wriggling and tickling his bright eyes with dirty fur and pink kisses. Hiccup still held him as he pried the red tubes from his cat's body, tossed the yellow nodes aside, and wept for real this time. Toothless nosed his tears away, grooming him like a kitten.

 

The pair moved to outfit Toothless again with his gear: they heard sirens and blasts from outside as Bloodfist learned his power source was disconnected. The building rocked. The machine holding Toothless's super essence fell in splinters. Toothless leapt to the floor with new vigour, and his claws seared stronger than ever. Hiccup was still shaking. Toothless roared brazen and flexed under his human's hand, and Hiccup nodded, his smile spun of glass.

 

"Okay, bud. Let's do this thing."

 

Toothless yowled with a battle-eagerness to have made Stoick proud.

 

There was glass in Hiccup's throat, as well.

 

They charged to the window, and with remembered motions Hiccup strapped Toothless in and Berk's two little heroes burst out of the building, riding rocket-power and revenge.

 

In the distance, Hiccup heard cheers.

 

Circling, they came within view of the war robot fast. Wreck and ruin crunched under its heel, and sparks swirled around them, even in the air a thousand feet away. The leviathan turned, and Bloodfist sat atop its crown, smiling. Hiccup would have gladly spat the shards in his lungs at him.

 

An array of antennae and emitting machines lay at Bloodfist's hand and on his metal arm, and Hiccup swallowed. One blinked red. They flew in closer, risking the crumbling buildings overhead.

 

"You're back! Well, what do you know." Bloodfist laughed, and it mutated. He snarled. Red arrived again. The part of Hiccup that was bestial heard a challenge. The part of Toothless that was human heard impending death.  "Come on, then! Try me again, boy! Try your strength! And you will bow again; you will break again! And this time, _you will stay broken."_

 

The red light shone, inviting. Toothless nipped Hiccup at the chin and collarbone; blood sprang from the gifted dentures, and his human's head cleared. Hiccup dug his fingernails into Toothless's flank.

 

Bloodfist thrust a finger at them as they thundered in the sky. "Remember what happened to your father, boy! Remember what _you did!_ Remember that the _strongest bough snaps hardest!_ " Toothless mewled, a plea not to listen.

 

And, then, Hiccup _got it._

 

He laughed, his demented breaths broken on the wind. He was never strong, but he was not sundered glass. He was made of rubber, he remembered.

 

"You cannot resist!"

 

He would not, then.

 

Red flashed and blinded him.

 

His hands jerked without his consent, and he and Toothless spun sudden suspended as invisible strings manipulated their flight path. Toothless yowled panic in Hiccup's face as they fell, out of the air and down, down, down.

 

The sky whirled above. A storm cloud was leaving.

 

Toothless nuzzled Hiccup's bleeding chin.

 

Sound was away, blown to somewhere past the horizon. It was with Stoick Haddock, wherever he had gone. Gravity was behind them, somewhere below, not so far down now. He looked at Toothless. Toothless was caught in the maelstrom, but fear could not reach Hiccup.

 

Hiccup couldn't speak, but he smiled. In that moment, the sun struggling to deliver dawn and the air chill as their almost corpses and world's end nigh in flying embers, Hiccup was the very picture of his father.  

 

His expression asked a question, permission. "I trust you," Toothless remembered. And he meowed that _yes_ , he trusted Hiccup, too.

 

Always would.

 

Hiccup tore off his armoured bracers and let his weapons tumble away. He was only a Normal person. He tightened the straps holding his accidental cat to him. Toothless clawed at Hiccup's chest plate as he realized what his stupid little human was attempting. Toothless, Hiccup knew, would have to be strong for both of them.   

 

Hiccup unbuckled one by one the diagonal straps, and Toothless looked at the approaching ground as he thought at the rate of a thousand determined terror-tumbling kilometers accelerating about what Hiccup was asking of him. Then, it happened. The last clip blew free and the rocket that had saved the pair from the Green Death and countless other many-coloured catastrophes left Hiccup's back and, burning already, crashed to the ground.

 

Hiccup threw his arms out, now having rendered himself utterly useless, no matter what Bloodfist could fill his head with.

 

But nothing came to occupy the space. There was no doubt to let it in, now.

 

Toothless roared as he braced himself, shimmering field catching dust around them. Bloodfist was speaking. Toothless's teeth shook in his mouth and Hiccup steeled himself for a rough landing.

 

The air fought, and so did they. Rearing up, Toothless pulled them away from the ground, and Hiccup gasped, half-laughing. Bloodfist made a noise of distemper and dismay. Hiccup and Toothless flew above, and there was steel in Hiccup's eye as they dove for Bloodfist's machinery.

 

Bloodfist brought his metal hand to bear, and swung down; the young Haddock's body was inches from him. Hiccup's hands closed on the red emitter, and Toothless's claws pierced through its white neighbor. Bloodfist's blow landed, and there was a deathly crunch. The machines were ripped from their sockets in the robot. The two fliers spun wild away, and tumbled to the asphalt. The emitters smashed.

 

Hiccup sat straight and saw that the crunch had been his prosthetic foot being mangled.

 

Toothless panted and, equal parts satisfied and shocked, looked at the broken machines. Hiccup realized that he had no way left to signal their success to the others. He would not have minded fighting still on his own, but he could not stand.

 

He unclipped Toothless and willed him away, but his cat would have none of it, and turned in anger as Bloodfist spat and swore and brought the robot's arms around to crush them. Toothless spat back, Valhalla-bound.

 

Just then, the robot staggered. Bloodfist reeled and bellowed, the situation slipping from his hands as he fell off his steed. Hiccup grabbed Toothless's middle and scrambled back. Metal crunched, and the clouds fled as Stormfly, Grump, Meatlug, Barf, Belch, and Hookfang entered the fray.

 

"I thought I told you lot to _wait!_ " Hiccup said with a frown and complete joy.

 

Astrid laughed, framed by the returning sun. "Yeah, so?" Her fist burst the robot's leg. She let out a war cry and ripped it from the socket. It dangled by pulled cords, like tendons, and smoke gushed out quick as blood.

 

"Like I said, we weren't gonna let you have all the fun, man!"

 

"Holy shit, did you see that hole I just made? Hey, Ruff, look -- look at that hole! That's my _fist,_ baby!"

 

"Oh yeah? Well! Look at _this!_ I'm gonna like punch right through it, and I'm gonna tear its _guts out!"_

 

"Dude, Legs, what's with the sudden bloodlust? Just chill."

 

"No way! I'm doing this! Look at this sick hole I'm making!"

 

"Yeah and I'm gonna _blow it up!_ "

 

"What? No, Ruffnut -- "

 

"Oh my god!"

 

"Whoa!"

 

"Legs, are you alive?"

 

"Yeah!! I'm okay!"

 

"Aha! Yeah! Gimme five, bro. That's the power of Barf and Belch."

 

"Nah, I think it was mostly me, I mean -- you know, being able to light shit on fire is kind of a big deal -- "

 

"Oh, just shut the fuck up."

 

As they continued the fight, Hiccup struggled to crawl away over the wreckage; Toothless pulled him up and pushed anxiously, but Hiccup had no purchase and he fumbled. Finally reaching the scene, his mother dodged the robot's legs without grace. Desperate leaps brought her to him.

 

"Hiccup! Oh my god, are you --"

 

"I'm fine! You shouldn't be here!"

 

"Neither should you! Come on, let's get y --"

 

An explosion wracked the robot and Snotlout was thrown clear. A fiery metal plate ten feet across, whistling with wires and streaming steel, shot out of its body. Hiccup cried out and threw himself over his mother as it approached them. Toothless reacted in the scrap of time he had. When the plate split in two, Hiccup was lying slack over his remaining family, his armour in pieces. Valka shrieked and clutched her baby, and the threads of Toothless's blue field dispersed.

 

Hiccup coughed in the dust. "I'm fine, Mum."

 

Her fingers trembled on his face and brow. She brushed his sweaty fringe aside and took his arms in hand. "We're getting out of here! Can you stand?"

 

"No, I -- "

 

"I'll carry you!"

 

He shook off his cracked armour and bloody pull-over, leaning on her, now but a skinny youth in a T-shirt. "What? Are you nuts?! I'm too heavy!" But her suit and her will outmatched his weight, and she pulled him down and over debris with no problem. Valka had not been such steel in a long time.

 

"Where can we hide?"

 

"Er, I don't know -- there was a bunker, I think, at Dad's headquarters but it's probably --"

 

A great crashing resounded behind them, and Hiccup began to turn.

 

"No! No!" His mother pulled him onward.

 

Toothless roared, looking behind. Bloodfist roared back. The battle was not over.

 

"Hiccup! Look out!" Astrid screamed.

 

"Shit!"

 

Another crash threw Hiccup and Valka down, tumbling across slabs of smashed asphalt and into the sewer new-exposed below. Hiccup scrabbled up, sliding down the slanting street face. Water and rock sprayed on them. The ground shook again and Toothless yowled above, glancing down at them and behind at Bloodfist, approaching. A pipe fell out of place and Valka yelped.

 

"Mum!"

 

"Oh, no. This is bad..." She struggled, and Hiccup rushed for her, his face already bloodless. There was no sun down here.

 

"Mum, are you okay? Mum!"

 

"This stupid suit..." she raised an arm to show him where a pipe had pierced through it, and gas hissed in streams from both sides of the puncture.

 

The earth had gone out from under, and now there was only endless plummeting sky in all directions, and Hiccup was no real superhuman. "No! Oh my god, no, no -- _Mum!_ No, Mum, please -- "

 

"It's fine, I'm fine -- Hiccup." She took his shoulder in her free hand as he panicked. "It didn't get me. I'm okay. Hiccup: I'm _okay._ " She twisted, and pried her arms from the sleeves. The cloth hung skewered on the pipe as she left it.

 

"Okay, okay, okay..." He moved to help her. Gas still hissed from the ruined super-suit, and she helped him stand, both of them now perfectly powerless.

 

Toothless looked down at them, and made a decision. He began to turn away.

 

Hiccup was not having it. "Absolutely not!" He wrestled up the street-slabs with renewed fuel. Toothless understood, and moved in to seize Hiccup's collar when he got the chance.  

 

"Hiccup!"

 

"Stay here, Mum!"

 

"Hiccup, as your _mother,_ I absolutely _forbid_ y --"

 

Toothless pulled his human up like a kitten. Hiccup called down in youth and mirth. "Sorry, but last week I didn't even _have_ a mum! I'm still adjusting!"

 

"Hiccup, no! You don’t have to be a hero, Hiccup! _Please!_ "

 

He sat astride the crack at the street's rim, Toothless beside him. His expression had gone grave. The sky darkened.

 

"Sorry, but I do."

 

Valka did not breathe.

 

And so, crippled and bleeding, weakened and trembling, furious as hell and doubtless as heaven, grey-faced as if death had already taken him, bright-eyed as if the sun lived in him, Hiccup turned.

 

Bloodfist approached, hand on his metal arm. The robot struggled still behind him. Astrid had given up that fight, and was running to intercept this one.

 

Hiccup was not going to let her. He straightened on his knees, his best approximation of standing proud. "Hey, _douchebag!_ "

 

"What, _ingrate?"_ Bloodfist rumbled sharp back.

 

_"Fuck you!"_

 

Bloodfist made an incoherent sound of fury.

 

Toothless roared rage back.

 

Hiccup summoned the memory of white death in his hand and the fate he had been spared, and responded similarly, blind and deaf and hideously blood-thirsty.

 

When Hiccup was a baby, his father would taste before feeding him, to check that his son would be safe. It was what he always did, even to the end.

 

Now, Hiccup was poisoning himself.

 

Drunk on anger, Hiccup took a rock in hand and threw it at Bloodfist's face. "It's over, arsehole! Give it up!" He spat at the ground.

 

"Or is it?"

 

Bloodfist leveled one of his contraptions at Hiccup, and the robot far away stopped, started, honed in on them. Toothless took a stance even deeper. Astrid and Valka screamed both their names. The robot shot a beam at them, but missed entirely. The ground exploded, and Hiccup and Toothless were knocked tumbling down. Bloodfist did not succumb to frustration, but lunged at them as they lay. Toothless yowled.

 

Bloodfist's metal arm was capable of knocking Toothless clean away. His flesh arm was capable of closing around Hiccup's throat. Toothless cried out. Bloodfist squeezed.

 

Blackness came for Hiccup again.

 

It was over.

 

He was too stunned to struggle long. The metal arm came to his throat, too, and he was lifted from the ground. His hands fell away, nerveless.

 

The robot honed in again, and blasted at Toothless. It did not miss this time, and Toothless tumbled, his blue field weakening. Hiccup lost his hearing.

 

Toothless shook himself and howled for Hiccup, but there was no response. Hiccup's eyes had closed, and his lips were ashen. Toothless bounded up and forward, afraid his human had already left him.

 

Hiccup's foot hung limp three feet from the sundered ground. The robot shot at Toothless again. It only barely missed. Toothless was airborne. His claws were aflame. His teeth thirsted for Bloodfist's neck. He tread blue fire and pounced.

 

Hiccup fell stone-heavy and grave-silent from Bloodfist's hands.

 

Bloodfist and Toothless struggled, metal fingers and claws scrabbling and scraping, and blue fire and red lasers flying. Toothless saw Hiccup lying, twitching barely in the wreck, and suddenly blood was not enough to quench him. The metal arm that fought him began to tremble, and Bloodfist screamed terror as it melted. Toothless was a wild animal again. He scored Bloodfist deep, and relished the scent of burning devil's flesh.

 

The robot was still not down. Bloodfist pushed away and swung his leftover steel, and the robot followed his order with a last ball of fire. The building next to them was shot through, and it imploded. Toothless nudged at Hiccup, who gasped ragged. Hiccup fought to open his eyes. The disastrous building bore down on them. Toothless whined, and Hiccup sucked in shallow against his furry snout. He drew a last breath as the ruin fell.

 

Silence descended.

  
  
  


 

 

The dust settled.

 

Astrid stopped running.

 

"No..." someone said softly.

 

The air was chill with the lost morning. A cloud passed over them.

 

Rocks shifted by the hole in the street. Valka finally clambered up. She stumbled.

 

"Hiccup!"

 

The stunned people of Berk heard nothing.

 

Even the wind was dead.

 

No one would have had the strength to go through the rubble, even those with superpowers. They knew what they'd find.

 

The robot was down. Bloodfist looked for an escape. No one stopped him.

 

Valka fell to her knees.

 

And then.

 

The building's corpse began to crack, and half of it fell in dust. Many cried out. They would not even have a burial.

 

But soon blue flames were seen licking the wood, and Valka backed away.

 

The wreckage exploded.

 

Framed at its blown centre, Toothless stood, but he was five times the size he'd been before it all fell. He gleamed with blue flames that unfurled on the wind ten feet above his head, and his paws burned. He roared, triumph and power filling him. His prosthetic claws had somehow grown too, and each one scraped the ground with six feet of metal.

 

Below his belly, Hiccup uncurled, and he saw spots as he gasped through his swollen throat and bruised chest. He put his hand on Toothless's flank, and felt nothing unusual despite the blue inferno. He stood, one leg his own, and one made up for by his best friend. He narrowed his eyes.

 

Bloodfist was going to fucking _hell_.

 

Air made Hiccup's head spin, but he lunged with Toothless anyway, bearing down on Bloodfist in united strength. The villain screamed rage and unwilling defeat. Hiccup and he were fighting with their hands, wrestling on the ground, seizing rocks to bash each other with. They fought as ordinary men, as mortals and weaklings with nothing to lose, with knees to groins and elbows to noses and teeth on arms, and with the dignity of rabid dogs in a ring of death.

 

Bloodfist broke Hiccup's nose, but Hiccup tore off his fingernail. He bit off a patch of skin above the eyebrow, and landed a rib-breaking blow. He grabbed an arm and twisted, and Bloodfist shrieked. Bracing himself with a stump shoulder against the ground, Bloodfist rolled over, crushed him, threw the skinny youth off. Hiccup scrambled up again. Toothless smashed his front paws on Bloodfist's back, and the villain lost a tooth. Hiccup took it and forced it down Bloodfist's throat, ignoring the spittle in his face. Bloodfist grabbed onto Hiccup's stump leg and wrenched it vile. Hiccup grimaced, but made no sound. Toothless howled instead, and lunged.

 

Bloodfist cried out.

 

Toothless blinked. Hiccup shook. Warm liquid splashed both of their faces.

 

Bloodfist twitched between them and Hiccup shoved him away, brimming disgust and spinning horror. His mangled prosthetic was covered in blood. A matching puncture dug into Bloodfist’s gut, spilling redness everywhere as the villain clutched it one-armed.

 

Hiccup stared. Bloodfist was trying to get away, but he was having trouble moving and holding in his blood simultaneously. Toothless loomed and growled behind him, awaiting action and orders. Bloodfist looked, for the first time, afraid. Hiccup pushed against a fallen wall, and stood.

 

Hiccup stood and stared nigh-blank-faced at the helpless man. Those nearby who had seen him right before his father died gasped, and glanced at Bloodfist and back, because Hiccup H Haddock had vanished again, and they knew not what was standing in his form instead.

 

The man standing there wanted blood, and while the Hiccup of a day ago was incapable of murder he realised now that it was fine, it was fine -- he’d already killed a man, so what did one more count?

 

He was naturally weak, he was naturally powerless, but he was right -- revenge was right, revenge was right, _red_ was right -- and he was not fully human anymore besides, and he’d killed a man the previous evening, so it was _fine._

 

He could step on Bloodfist and finish the job, and it would be _right,_ and he’d be rewarded with _red,_ and his father was a great man who deserved _revenge,_ bloody and bright.

 

He laughed.

 

He did not sound right. He did not sound sane, or just, or anything like Hiccup.

 

Toothless barked at him, and before the laughter had even flickered on Hiccup’s face Toothless whinged, blue and mournful; in not even a second after hearing it, his human’s expression had dropped, becoming horror and grief all at once.

 

Two wrongs don’t make a right, he remembered.

 

There was a moment where he stood and swayed, and those watching breathed relief. And then Hiccup let out a dry sob and collapsed completely.

 

He felt faint, but Toothless caught him. Air filled his gasping mouth, searing. His vision exploded in clouds and pinches. Someone rushed forward to tend to Bloodfist and restrain him.

 

Hiccup looked at the sky. “Sorry for making you watch that,” he said, to the clouds. Toothless licked his face and nosed him, holding him snug in his massive paws, all tenderness, and Hiccup was ashamed of himself and how hard he’d become. Toothless sensed his heart-sickness, and curled around tighter.

  
What a wonderful bud he had, Hiccup thought, as he lost consciousness.

 

 

 

 


End file.
